


Exogenesis Symphony: Overture

by space_matt



Series: Exogenesis [1]
Category: Muse (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Novel, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-02
Updated: 2018-07-10
Packaged: 2018-12-09 09:43:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 43,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11666580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/space_matt/pseuds/space_matt
Summary: Dom's life turns upside down when a strange man makes an impossible request





	1. Prologue

 

There is an old English proverb which states when March comes in like a lion, it goes out like a lamb. It was March when he came into my life and true to that old proverb, he was a lion when he entered; a whirlwind of energy and boundless thinking. He was exhausting and excitable. Lucky like the leprechauns of March with the riches of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. He had dreams bigger than this world and he knew no limits, not even the sky. He was positively brilliant; without a doubt more brilliant than I; possibly the most brilliant in the world. His morals were questionable, everything in his life nothing more, nothing less than a means to an end. There was much to be questioned about him, but one thing was for certain: No one in the world had the ability, or maybe it was the courage, to try, against all odds, to do the impossible. Not to discredit anyone who overcomes insurmountable odds. Perhaps I’m biased, but this was different. He was different. He wasn’t a man of faith in the traditional sense, at least. But he certainly had faith beyond any measure I had seen before. Faith in his own ideas, in his own dreams. Most of all, he had faith in me.

We all have stories to tell about how our lives shift and change, how our personalities mould to fit our surroundings. Sometimes we can split our lives into eras, big events abruptly changing the path our life was meant to go, or where we thought it was going. Sometimes the shift is gradual, going unnoticed until one day we look back and realize that we’re different from what we used to be, and there is no big event to mark the change, only growth and environment. In my case, there is a bold mark on my life’s timeline. A before and after. While I’d certainly never thought my life was boring before, when I look back on the day he came into my life it simply seems so very _average_ in comparison. That’s saying something, considering the space program that I founded sits at the forefront in advances of human orbital travel. But in hindsight, even that seems dull.

He came in on a gust of wind, quite literally. Outside, March was roaring in like a lion in a concerning apocalyptic global warming type of way. I was quietly bent over the laptop on my desk, working on my latest model and fidgeting with complex calculations and measurements to ensure the mechanics worked as required. When the door crashed open, I barely had time to look up before I was blasted in the face with a handful of papers. I hadn’t been expecting any visitors, and it was extremely unusual for people to simply walk in off the streets, considering the gated security this building had. I was already on edge with him and in terms of first impressions, he wasn’t off to a great start.

The apology that followed his entrance was uttered so rapidly it was difficult to catch individual syllables. “Bugger, sorry- sorry. Sorry, bit clumsy today. Sorry.” There was a rustling sound as what I assumed was a pile of papers falling to the floor. “Oh the papers…” I peeled a sheet from my face to reveal a tiny sparrow of a man struggling with the door. The steel door was easily three times his weight and he fought the wind with his entire body. The situation might have been comical, if I hadn’t already been put off by this stranger barging into my private office unexpected and uninvited. I was far from amused. The door finally slammed shut with a bang. Panting with effort, the slight man leaned against the door, his black hair a messy birds nest atop his head.

“ ’s a hurricane out there, innit?” he flashed me a grin that revealed one crooked front tooth. I stared. His entire being screamed _Englishman_. The wonky tooth, the pale skin, the skinny, wiry figure. And his clothes. His clothing choices were atrociously mismatched and ill fitting. He looked almost as if he’d stepped out of the wrong decade, the early two thousand’s perhaps.

He leaned over, eyeing the new hole in the wall the door handle had made. “Shit… did I do that? I’ll pay for the repairs. Bugger, really sorry.” He bustled forward, grin still plastered on his face and hand extended in greeting. “Matthew Bellamy, pleasure to meet you. I hope I’m not interrupting anything important.” He invited himself into the chair across from my desk, and immediately squatted in it like a child. Upon examining him further, it seemed he actually _was_ a child. Or rather, he was young. I garnered he looked to be nineteen or twenty at best. He even had bits of post pubescent acne scattered across his cheeks.

I shook his hand with hesitance. “Dom Howard… Please, sit down…” I gestured, though he was already seated. Sarcasm, outside of broken French, was the only language I was somewhat fluent in. He laughed, his glee manifesting itself in a memorable high pitched giggle. There was nothing funny about this, but evidently he found humor in it.

“I already know who you are, Dominic Howard,” he reassured me, rocking forward with his long fingers clenched around his knees. My brain continued to struggle to keep up with his quick words and I noticed his speech had a slight woo to it, as though no one had spent the time to teach him how to properly pronounce his R’s. I placed his muddled accent as from Devon, which was recognizable mostly because I’d grown up in Devon as well. Ironically. It was probably the only saving grace that allowed me to understand him at all.

He babbled on, ticking off on his fingers as he went. “You’re the head engineer and owner of Howard Enterprise, a privately run space program- the first and only of it’s kind or _any_ kind of space program, for that matter, in the UK. You founded the business after you left Virgin Galactic because you recognized the UK’s need for a similar program. You studied at Cambridge and then with the NASA space program before joining the team at Virgin. That’s all common knowledge, but I know you distrust the government getting involved with the space program these days. Global politics,” he trailed off, mumbling something about the Tories and if they could keep secrets so could we. “Anyway, you’re single, a workaholic, you live close to your work and you’re charming and like-able, you have a huge network of people and resources, and you also need money for your private project on the interstellar research probe. Also your mum makes a banging banoffee pie and your favorite book is 1984.” He flashed a toothy grin at me, as if it wasn’t at all uncommon for a complete stranger to know intimate details about my life and my _mum’s pie?_

I could only stare at him, mouth slightly agape. I tried to speak, but found myself mute. How could he know some of these things? Sure, the business and where I studied were all public knowledge. But how could he know what my private life was like? And my private research was my private research. It wasn’t published. It was simply theoretical work. None of it had been tested. I didn’t even have a team yet. This was baffling and completely unnerving. I felt my privacy was violated and it immediately put me on edge. His first impression was not improving in the slightest.

“You don’t talk much, Dominic Howard,” Matthew noted, still smiling. His gaze never wavered from mine. His eyes were an astonishing blue, lit as though he had an internal source of light. And his gaze was penetrating, as if he had direct access into my brain. It was intimidating and I had to look away, instead focusing my gaze on the papers still in my hand. I flipped through them. Pages and pages printed from the internet about Trappist-1, a planetary system 39 lightyears away that hosted seven potentially earth-like planets orbiting a cool dwarf star.

“They found _seven_ planets going round that star that could potentially host life,” Matthew explained, nodding at the paper in my hand as if I couldn’t read what the article was about. Trappist-1 was old news to me and the rest of the scientific community, the planetary discovery was quickly dwarfed by hundreds of new Earth-like planets found, now almost on a daily basis. These were discoveries, once unusual and exciting news, that rarely got news coverage anymore simply because most ordinary citizens had bored of the subject. Of course there were more important, Earth relevant topics to discuss such as war, terror, death, politics, all things that provided shock value and depression to the world.  Britain generally had better news channels than some other countries, but since Brexit and the rise of the Tories and nationalism, the news felt more dystopian than ever. Humanity’s waning interest in things relating to outer space made me lose hope for the future of space exploration. Which was why I was here, I suppose.

The articles in my hand were old and dumbed down for the general public, mostly artists representations of what life on the planets might be like, nothing much at all about the science behind the discovery of the planets. I looked back up at the man across from me to find he was still watching me eagerly. Who was this loud, nosy person and why was he here, showing me this amateur article about something that had been researched now for ages? I furrowed my brow at him and he nearly rocketed out of his seat waiting for my response.

“And?” I asked. Surely there was an explanation for this bizarre visit.

“Well, that’s where I want to go!” His voice quivered with excitement and his body seemed to vibrate due to his foot jiggling at approximately one hundred kilometers an hour. I half expected his shoe to fly off. He could probably rocket himself to Trappist-1 on that kind of energy.

I laughed loudly at the absurdity of his statement. That would explain it. It was a joke. A prank. “Good one! You almost had me! Who set you up?”

Matthew’s expression was puzzled. “No, wait, this isn’t a joke! I’m serious!” He burst up from his chair and paced madly about the room, occasionally bouncing so much that his feet left the ground. Not joking. Serious. My smile fell. This was becoming a bigger problem than I had initially thought. This man was clearly not right in the head. I wondered if I would need to get security involved. I set the papers on my desk and cleared my throat as I dug deep into the recesses of my mind to find the necessary patience it seemed I needed with this mad man.

“Do you know _anything_ about space travel, Mr. Bellamy?” If that was even his real name. I folded my hands together on my desk, an exercise that reminded me to remain calm, even if inside I was certainly not calm at all. This wasn’t the first time that we had gotten a strange and impossible request from someone but never anything to this magnitude. Nothing this _insane._ Most people had common sense. Well... Some.

Matthew sat back down in the chair across from me, still fidgeting. “Well, not much,” he admitted, “But that’s why I need your help! Since you’re researching interstellar travel…that’s why I came to you. It took me a long time… to decide…years…” he began ticking away on his fingers again, mumbling. “Extensive background checks, history with the government, political alignments, acquaintances, social networking, staff, their backgrounds, their political alignments, scanning for corruption, essentially. A virus scan, if you will.”

“You’ve done background checks on me? And my staff?” I asked, immediately alarmed. I was quick to get on my feet. Who _was_ this guy? “All of that is very personal information, and some of that is confidential! That’s illegal!”

Matthew shook his head. “It was all public information, you just have to know where to look, that’s all. There were lots of potential companies, but I picked you! You really impressed me! Also your mum sure is a pleasant lady. There’s nothing illegal about talking with people, you know.” Was I supposed to feel flattered? Because I didn’t. I definitely did not. Not even a little bit.

A cold chill shivered down my spine. “Well I’m not comfortable with that. I’m going to have to ask you to please leave now,” I stated in the most calm voice I could muster, which was admittedly, not very at this point. There was a definite quiver there. I stood to assert my authority and reached for the phone.

“But you should be flattered! You’re the cleanest, most uncorrupt business out there! That’s very hard to come by these days, you know. Please listen!” he begged, leaning over my desk now when he should have most definitely been heading the other way, toward the door.

“I will contact security to have you removed, Mr. Bellamy.”

His eyes widened in fascination. “This place has security? That’s very fancy. Oh. I suppose. Lot’s of equipment. Danger. All that science stuff.”

“And creeps like you. Now get out,” I demanded, eyes flashing as I picked up the phone and began dialing. Finally, Matt put his hands up placatingly and began backing toward the door.

“Alright, alright,” he said and I began to lower the phone. “I guess I should have expected that sort of reaction. I’m leaving now,” He plucked up his jacket from the floor. I hadn’t even noticed he’d dropped it there when he’d come in, such was the whirlwind of his entrance. He continued to back up as he shrugged his jacket on, never taking his eyes off of me. “Please consider it?” he asked eagerly.

“You’re mad!” I shouted. “Get out of my office!”

Matt looked startled and fumbled for the door handle, backing out. “Ooright,” he muttered quietly as the door shut gently behind him. The following silence felt deafening despite the muffled sounds of engines and machinery of the distance test room and the constant hum of the industrial HVAC system. It felt like a bomb had gone off and I was left with the devastated aftermath.

Exhausted and shaking with rage and maybe a bit of fear, I sat heavily back in my chair, rubbing at my temples. Finally, I opened up the top drawer of my desk and pulled out a bottle of paracetamol. I popped two pills and guzzled half of the bottle of water that was on my desk. Then I carefully rearranged the papers on my desk, tossing the article’s about Trapper-1, perhaps with more violence than was really necessary. How seriously should I be taking this? Was this person a threat? Should I take it up with security? The police? Probably the police. He had managed to get some really personal information about me. Better to be safe than sorry, probably.

I reached for the phone again to call security but paused. I flipped open my laptop and pulled up Google, carefully typing Matthew’s name. I scrolled through pages and pages of results, trying different combinations of his name and Trapper-1 or other details he mentioned. He was probably part of the NSA or some shit. There were plenty of Matthew Bellamy’s out there but none of them seemed to fit the profile of the man who had been in my office. Perhaps he really had given me a false name. I wouldn’t have any way of knowing. Giving up on him, I typed in my own name, checking to see how easily someone could find information on me. I was fairly well known. There were numerous articles about me and written by me. The company’s webpage popped up almost immediately. I even had my own Wikipedia page. I had to admit, there was a lot of information on me available for public access. But it didn’t give someone the right to track every move I made, did it?

…

I shot up from my seat and went to the door. It was equipped with multiple locks and I flipped them all. Evidently it was an extra precaution I would need to take in the future, even when I was present. I turned to pick up the phone to call security again but my foot slipped on something and I looked down. Under my shoe was a small bit of paper, slipped under the door. I bent down and picked it up, peering at it for ages to be certain that I was reading it correctly.

It was a check. A check written for one million pounds. Signed Matthew Bellamy. A note attached with his contact information.

Alright. He had my attention.


	2. Chapter 2

_Plunk_

 

_Plunk_

 

_Plunk_

 

I looked up from my coffee and stared as the man across from me added three sugar cubes to his tea and stirred. He reached for the cream and poured a splash in. More stirring.

 

_Plop_. Another sugar cube. Stir.

 

_Sploosh_. And another.

 

“Eugh.I think your tea is more solid than liquid.” I said in disgust, imagining the sediment at the bottom of his cup.I nearly gagged as Matthew ignored me and took a giant sip. He smacked his small lips obnoxiously and gave me that toothy grin that was beginning to irritate me simply for existing. At the right angle, it made him look like a toddler growing his very first tooth.I wanted to punch it straight.It made it hard to take him seriously.

 

"Perfect," he trilled while setting the cup on the small table between us, not bothering with a saucer. I cringed as I watched a drop of the sugar-rich liquid slide down the side of the cup and circle it's way around the base, well on its way to making a brown, sticky stain on the table. I instinctively reached across the surface, moved his cup onto the saucer and wiped the liquid up with my handkerchief. Who taught him how to drink tea, honestly?

 

"Why do you even drink tea if you're only going to drown out the flavor with sugar?" I inquired while sitting back in my chair stiffly and finally enjoying a sip of my coffee. Black. No sugar. No cream. "Why don't you just order a soda?"

 

_Plunk._  In went another sugar cube. Jesus.

 

"Seriously?"

 

"Well, I  _thought_ it was perfect, but it had an aftertaste," he explained leaning forward until I could only see the top of his head. He studied the tea’s color and transparency with such intensity that his uniquely shaped nose very nearly touched the liquid.All that sugar certainly explained the excessive energy he'd had the other day but now I was remembering what a strange man he was and was beginning to reconsider my decision to agree to another meeting.

 

I wasn’t proud to admit that I’d been drawn here because of the money.Half our work was in writing research grants and schmoozing investors who were far more reputable than the man who sat before me, so it was crazy to even entertain the idea of this bumbling kid funding anything. However, there was always this soft part of me that seemed to want to give people the benefit of the doubt.And I think perhaps I was worried about him. I strongly suspected that he might be delusional about the amount of money he actually had in his bank account. He was obviously missing a few screws upstairs. I felt almost certain that if I actually tried to do something with the check he’d left under my door that his account would be overdrawn and the check would bounce. It wasn't my goal to financially ruin a madman, even if he had written the check himself.I doubted a university student could afford any sort of setback like that, even if it were a relatively small overdraft fee in comparison to the sizable amount written on the check. At least, I was assuming he was a university student. He seemed about that age. However, he needed to understand that my company didn't exactly offer field trips like the one he was asking about. Nor did anyone else on the planet. But money makes the world go round, and though my company was doing well, having money to put toward my research for an interstellar probe was no small thing to snub my nose at. Government space programs had been getting smaller and smaller budgets every year.Scientific advancement in matters of exploring space had fallen largely on the shoulders of privately funded programs now.And I had some ideas that needed research and testing.

 

I sat back in my chair, tucked my briefcase at my side and folded my hands as I watched him prod at his tea like a child playing with a stick in the sand. "You do know that tea is supposed to have an aftertaste, right? That's how tea is. It lingers."

 

"Why do you care how I drink my tea?" he fired back. Matthew pulled his legs up onto the chair, sitting cross legged and sipping at his cup, seemingly satisfied with the consistency of his sediment encrusted leaf water. I was sure the unsaturated granules of sugar coated the bottom centimeter of his cup. His gaze locked on mine with that unwavering blue stare. Maybe it was the stark contrast of long black eyelashes on the backdrop of cerulean blue or the sharp way his pupils contracted when he focused on you but there was something about those eyes that demanded one pay attention to him. It scared me how easily I found myself getting trapped in them.“I mean, is it really any of your business? Is the way that I drink my tea going to change your mind about my proposal?"

 

"No," I answered hesitantly, averting my gaze and feeling heat rising into my cheeks.I turned to the contents of my coffee.

 

"Then what is the purpose of wasting time and drawing attention to such a trivial detail? Who cares?”

 

I could feel my patience waning again and I didn’t especially welcome feeling as though he were interrogating me and guilting me, so I took a sip from my coffee as a means to distract myself for a moment from his intensity. "I suppose it's just strange. Most people appreciate tea for what it is instead of trying to make it something it's not. Plus that’s easily twice the amount of sugar you’re supposed to consume in a day!”

 

Glancing back up at him, I saw his eyebrow had arched comically high over the rim of his cup. “What a peculiar thing to come out of  _your_  mouth,” he mumbled under his breath. There was a thump as he leaned forward and planted his feet firmly on the floor, a first, I noted. He set the tea cup back down on the table, again ignoring the saucer, much to my chagrin. "You know what I think, Dominic Howard?” he inquired, his tone challenging. “I think your calculated and scientific view of the world closes you off to the multitudes of possibilities the universe has to offer.You believe, based on evidence and data that things should be a certain way, and when something is not that way it is wrong, simply because it hasn’t been proven otherwise.” He sat back in his chair and waved his hand dismissively. “Of course I would expect a rocket scientist to think that way out of necessity and I’m not saying it’s bad, but it is limiting, don’t you think? Especially for someone who takes abstract ideas and shapes them into reality.But socially, socially you collect your data, you take what you know and you place people into neat little categories where you can make assumptions of their lives but what’s it based on, hmm?You know this.You’re not stupid.It’s not a new thing, but we all do it, don’t we?You know what it is though? Groupthink.Kind of like in 1984.”He pointed a finger at me.“Anyway, most people drink their tea without this much sugar, and so therefore, it is strange and wrong to drink it this way. Am I right?”

 

So he was mad  _and_  pretentious. Great. I set my coffee back on it’s saucer and reached into my briefcase for a pad of paper and my favorite pen. I flipped the pad open to the first blank page and set it down on the table in front of me. “So you think you’re special?Because you drink your tea with enough sugar to give you type two diabetes at…nineteen and weighing in at forty-two kilos? How edgy.”And groupthink, an old idea that he was proud of, as if he’d thought it up all by himself.

 

I focused my attention to my notepad and drew up a simple bell curve, labeling the x-axis with “number of sugar cubes” and the y-axis with “number of people” before turning the pad so the graph was upright to Matthew. He had bad logic, but if he wanted to talk science and statistics about the social preferences in tea, than we would talk about science and statistics about social preferences in tea. I marked a line at the bottom of the bell curve. “From this line and to the right, your left, would represent the population of people who prefer their tea with no sugar at all.” I marked another notch to the left of center. “And this would represent the amount of people who like their tea with one cube.” Another notch to the right of center. “This would represent the amount who prefer two sugar cubes. About even with those who prefer one. I’d guess the general population averages somewhere between 2 and 3 sugar cubes.” I drew a notch towards the bottom again on the right side of the curve. “And this line would represent the amount of the population who prefers their tea with three or more. And over here,” I marked a tiny line nearly off the edge of the paper and labeled it ‘ _Matthew,’_  “would represent  _you_  who likes to drink it with six. An anomaly that is removed from the data and will also probably be removed by natural selection as well.”

 

He only blinked at me. “Yes, that’s a very nice diagram, Dominic, but that doesn’t mean anything.” He snatched the pen out of my hand and added a title at the top of the page “IQ of the World’s Population,” then scratched out my X-axis title and labeled it "IQ" He pointed at my first line with my pen. “Let’s say then, that this is the percentage of people with an IQ below 70. We could probably assume this part of the bell curve would represent very young children and those who are mentally disabled, correct?” He pointed to my 1 cube and 2 cube marks “Most people have an IQ between 70 and 130, and as we go down...” he trailed off as he marked ticks down the curve of the graph, labeling them as he went. Stephen Hawking at 160, Albert Einstein at 190. Finally he stopped at the point where I had marked him on the tea graph “... we get here, to the people who have a 200 IQ.” He circled his mark and slid the pad back toward me. “So does that make me wrong?”

 

Ha. So he was claiming to have an IQ of 200? What a joke. That would make him smarter than me and he’d already proven he wasn’t especially logical. And even if he was smarter than me, why was he bothering coming to me for help? I took the pad back from him. “They aren’t related, but your implication is clear.” Add arrogant prick to descriptors for Matthew Bellamy. I flipped to a new page. "Mr. Bellamy, if you are who you say you are…” I laughed, “and actually have a 200 IQ score..." I laughed again and let my words hang in the air for a moment. “Let’s just say, hypothetically, that I said yes to building you your own personal spacecraft, how far is Trappist-1 from Earth?” I asked as I set the pad down on the table between us, pen poised over the paper.

 

“Erm… thirty nine light years if I recall." I jotted 39 light years on the pad.When I looked back up I noticed he was sucking on another sugar cube. I cringed again, imagining what all that sugar must be doing to his teeth. As someone who took extraordinary care for my dental hygiene, I felt personally offended by his lack of care for his teeth.

 

"Never had a cavity," he said so quietly I wasn’t sure if I’d even heard him. Wonderful. So he could read minds. Maybe  _he_  was an alien. Would explain his obsession with getting to another planet.And why he knew all that stuff about me.I caught myself subconsciously tapping my own teeth with my pen. Mind reader, alien, or maybe just observational. For some reason this infuriated me so I pointedly ignored him and continued on my original train of thought.

 

”And what is the distance of a light year, Mr. Bellamy?"

 

He grumbled a bit and shifted in his seat, pulling his legs back up into their original crossed position. He pulled an iPhone out of his pocket and punched at it with his long fingers. "You make this like school," he muttered as he looked up the information. "Erm, one light year is 9.4605284 and 10 to the 12th kilometers," he read slowly from his phone as I wrote it down and quickly did the math for him.

 

“So approximately nine point five trillion kilometers.”I scribbled on my pad, quickly doing the calculation. “So the distance you need to travel is three  _hundred_  and sixty nine  _trillion_  kilometers.” I glanced up to see his reaction but to my surprise the size of this number didn't seem to startle him at all. He only looked back at me while playing with the sugar cube in his mouth. I cleared my throat.

 

“Yeah?”

 

I stared at him.

 

“And you think you can get a probe to Alpha Centauri A in thirteen years.”

 

Oh my god.   
  


 

I stuttered, “First of all… first of all how the  _fuck_  do you know that? And secondly- secondly- it’s a  _starwisp_!It weighs only one ounce! And it’s propelled by microwave beams on a sail!”

 

“O-kay….” he dragged the word out slowly. I grit my teeth as frustration began to boil in my chest. Was this just not sinking in? What was wrong with this kid? "So how fast can it travel?”

 

I grabbed the pad and began writing furiously.I knew I was falling into his trap, he was playing me and I’d do better to not let my passion for my project be used to further his interest in his own crazy ideas.But I couldn’t help it.My frustration transferred to my hand where it gouged heavy dark streaks of letters and numbers into the paper.Calculations of mass and velocity of a 1 ounce probe and the microwave beam station we’d have set up on Earth. “Because a starwisp is so light, it can be propelled by simple microwave beams.I’ve got some ideas that could possibly push it to thirty-five percent the speed of light.”

 

“So why can’t we use that concept for a manned space craft?If you can get a wisp thing to move that fast why not a ship?”He used his finger to stir his tea, clearly oblivious to the basic rules of physics.

 

I grit my teeth.“Because.It doesn’t work on anything that has a larger mass than an ounce!As you can see from my calculations, you increase mass, the size of the microwave station gets impossibly large!”

 

“Yeah but in space, everything is weightless.”

 

Oh my  _god. “_ Weight is not the same as mass!I thought you said you were  _smart?_ ”

 

“Well… physics and maths aren’t my strengths exactly…but I’m a real quick learner.”

 

Delusional.   
  


 

“But what if we take, erm,… the Project Orion path.I read about that.Some nuclear explosions, get me up to half the speed of light in a day or whatever and there we go!”

 

“That would literally obliterate you.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Because humans have a limit to how many G-forces they can handle.Most people can handle three to four gee’s for a few seconds on a rollercoaster, and most trained fighter pilots can’t do much more than five or six and again for maybe a maximum of thirty-seconds.To go from zero to half the speed of light in a day…” I laughed and scribbled some more figures onto my notepad.“You think you could survive a hundred and seventy-seven gee’s in a twenty-four hour period?”

 

He stared at me. “What happens?”

 

“Technically?At lower gees the blood flows to your feet and away from your head.You loose consciousness and could eventually die under extended periods.At 177 gees? Well, I wouldn’t want to find out.But I’d guess you might look something similar to a pancake.”

 

“Okay…. Well how fast  _can_  we go?”

 

I sighed, tired now of having to explain elementary astrophysics concepts to this kid. “I don’t know, Matthew.There are so many factors involved in human space travel.I don’t have the time or the energy to sit here and calculate that for you.Figure it out yourself if you really want to know, but such travel would take much longer than yours or my lifetime and you’d be a carcass hundreds of thousands of years before you’d get to your destination. My focus is on the starwisp, which will be revolutionary enough on its own.”It was clear now though, that this meeting wasn’t about investing in a starwisp at all, and I’d been naive enough to think it could ever have been.

 

 

Matthew was chewing on his lip now while gazing at the paper. Without taking his eyes off the pad he reached toward me, making a grabby hand for the pen. I handed it to him and watched as he circled a few figures and made a few notes.He jotted down the term starwisp. I took a sip of my coffee, thinking the reality of his request was finally sinking in. He was so quiet. He scribbled a few notes at the bottom in that illegible hand and began chewing on my pen which made me want to kick him under the table. Not that I’d have been able to anyway since he'd pulled his legs up into the chair with him again. Couldn’t he sit normally? He was now pointlessly doodling an image of a rocket ship hurdling toward what I could only assume was Trappist-1 so I cleared my throat to get his attention. It seemed he was lost in thought. Well, I had things to do and people I needed to meet with so if this meeting was finished I wasn't keen on sticking around. I cleared my throat again.

 

"Matthew. Can I have my pad back? And my pen? Which you are chewing on? It’s bad for your teeth.” And my pen.

 

"Oh. Sorry," he muttered, handing the pen back to me without bothering to wipe his spit off it. I wiped my pen dry on the hem of my shirt. I was going to need to disinfect that later. "Can I keep this?" He asked, indicating the top sheet of the pad.

 

"Sure. Whatever," I said and he ripped the sheet off and handed the pad back to me, finally looking at me and smiling.

 

"Thanks," he said while I was shoving my pad back into my briefcase. "Are you leaving?"

 

"Yes. I've got accounts I need to work on and a meeting with an  _actual_  prospective investor, in  _my_  project.So if you don't mind I will be taking my leave now." I hoisted my briefcase off the chair and picked up my coffee mug. I looked over at him once more and noticed he looked a bit sad but was occupying himself with folding the paper. I softened a bit, suddenly feeling very sorry for him. I imagined he must be quite a lonely person, as strange as he was. "Bye, Matthew. Have a nice day," I said, genuinely meaning it. He smiled up at me.

 

"You too, Dominic. Good luck with your investor.”  



	3. Chapter 3

Since the dawn of the Space Race, Britain had always had a quiet sort of presence in the competition, it’s contributions always taking a backseat to the Soviet program and the United States’ NASA. This was due, in large part, to a lack of a domestic spaceport. Up until recently, all UK involvement in anything space had required us to borrow the amenities of other countries. It wasn’t logical for the UK to have the kind of towering, rocket launching sort of spacepad like the Kennedy Space Center in the United States, for example. Closer to the equator, the rotation of the Earth gives rocket launches a bit of a free boost that makes it both more economical and more efficient. However, most of Britain’s work in the space industry had dealt mainly with satellites, which didn’t require such fancy things like rocket launchers. Spaceplanes could easily do the job, and space planes were perfectly capable of operating out of a remote location in the UK. In 2014, the government announced plans to begin the building of a spaceport, even creating a competition for most ideal locations.

 

Then the Tories took over and everything changed. Government funding was dropped. The project came to a standstill. But I’d already been working closely with Virgin Galactic and the government, developing the plans for a spaceport in Newquay, Cornwall. I wasn’t ready to give up so easily. Just because the government stopped funding, didn’t mean private funding had to stop, so with the promise of high speed travel suborbital travel along with satellite launching, a need was created, investors were interested, and the British version of Virgin Galactic was born, putting Britain back on the map in terms of innovation for the space industry. I’d engineered the spaceplanes so now, if you were prestigious enough to have the money for a suborbital flight you could go into space. If you were especially prestigious, you could use the suborbital method to travel from one spaceport to another extremely quickly. One could travel from Britain to New Mexico in an hour. So far, the US and the UK were the only two nations to have spaceports, but China and Japan were not far behind, and other nations were beginning to develop plans for spaceports as well. This was the future.

 

There were drawbacks though. In an ideal world, the spaceport could be in London and the States would have one in New York and L.A. however, space travel was still highly dangerous. Large populated areas were bad for spaceports for two reasons: too much risk of endangerment in case of an accident, and too much commercial airline traffic. Remote locations were key just as much now as in all past spaceports and launch pads. In Newquay’s case, a ten thousand foot runway pointing at the open waters of the Atlantic ocean provided the remoteness required of a spaceport.

 

My testing lab was based in London, however, where I had easier and quicker access to resources I needed but this week I was on a routine visit to Cornwall to check in on operations. It was the last place I expected unannounced visitors, so imagine my surprise when a large box with legs burst in on my conference call, muttering something about this place being “weally” big. Long skinny fingers clutched the corners of the box, knuckles white under the strain of its weight. I had to excuse myself from the meeting.

 

“What the bloody hell are you doing here?” I demanded as I hung up the phone. It had been weeks since I’d last seen or heard from Matthew. I’d thought by now that he would have moved on. And how had he gotten in here? Surely I would have been notified if I was getting a visitor. “How did you get in here?”

 

He shuffled his pigeon-toed feet. “Can I set this down? It’s really heavy.”

 

“Yeah, yeah.”

 

He moved forward, nearly tripping. I cringed as I waited for the contents of the box to scatter across the floor, but he managed to catch himself. He dropped the box on the desk with a loud thump and a huff. He was sweaty. His shock of black hair was both standing on end and sticking to his face. His small chest heaved with the effort he’d just exerted. What was in that box? I stood and peered inside. Papers, hardcover text books. Astronomy. Physics. Astrophysics. Engineering, from what I could see.

 

“How did you get in here?” I asked again.

 

“Through the door? As you do…” He looked at me, puzzled about my apparently odd question. “Anyway, I’m ready!”

 

“For?”

 

“Building a spaceship!”

 

Obviously. “We’re not doing that.”

 

He pulled out a roll of paper from the box. “I made some rough blueprints, see?”

 

“You can’t-“ I stammered. He shoved the paper in my face. I glanced at it, a UFO-like ship with surprising detail. “That’s not-“ I pushed the paper away. “We aren’t building a space ship,” I finally finished firmly.

 

“I know what I’m doing.”

 

“No, you don’t!”

 

“No? Look again,” he pushed the blueprint back in front of me.

 

I studied it a little harder. It was actually quite a solid design. For the most part. I pointed at the paper. “Your calculation here is wrong. That’s not enough fuel for launch for it’s mass. Also what is this about?”

 

“Antigravity propulsion! That’s fuel for flying not launch. It doesn’t need much.”

 

I closed my eyes. “That’s not a thing. That’s conspiracy theorist bullshit.”

 

He pointed at me. “Doesn’t mean it’s wrong.”

 

Please. “I’m not building this.”

 

“But I studied all this stuff! I read all of it!” He pointed at the box. I shuffled through the box more. There was an impressive amount of complex papers, real journal articles with real experiments, not conspiracy bullshit. But also plenty of conspiracy bullshit mixed in. “I- I- tested out of some uni classes, just to make sure… see…?” He handed me a transcript. It wasn’t small. He’d managed to pass through a huge chunk of undergrad classes without actually taking them.

 

“You’ve basically earned a degree since I last saw you?”

 

“…Yeah…”

 

“That was… a month and a half ago…”

 

He was quietly shy about these accomplishments, jittering nervously.

 

“Some of these are Master’s level courses, Matthew…”

 

“Yeh…”

 

“You’ve been busy.” I couldn’t hide my admiration. It was extremely impressive what he’d accomplished in such a short period of time. Maybe he did have an IQ of 200 after all. I kept studying the transcript over and over. For the first time, I felt respect for him. Even if he was crazy and had off the wall ideas, he was incredibly intelligent. I’d misjudged him on that account. Still, testing out of courses caused loss of hands on experience.

 

“Sooo….. Can we build a spaceship?”

 

“No, Matthew.”

 

“But I paid you…”

 

Yeah… about that. There was absolutely no way that this kid could possibly have as much money as he said he did. A million pounds was not something one just had sitting around in their checking account. I was still convinced that he was delusional about having that much money. It was time to address that issue. Carefully, I fished the folded check from my wallet. I’d studied it more times than I’d like to admit and it’s loose crease gave me away. I laid the check flat in front of him, taking on a very serious tone, like a father talking to his son about drugs. “This isn’t real, is it? If I brought this to the bank, this check would bounce wouldn’t it?”

 

He eyed the check. The corner of his lip twitched into a smirk and I felt a little pit of hatred boil up in my chest. The observant twat had immediately noticed the well worn creases on the check and was pretentious enough that he got satisfaction out of it. Whatever admiration I’d had earlier drained as I recalled just how irritating he was.

“Well… it would. But-“

I laughed sharply. “Figures. It doesn’t matter anyway, one million quid won’t build you a space ship. It’s not enough money, no matter how impressive you think it looks on a check. You’re delusional.”

He glared at me. “Can I explain before you jump to conclusions? I have the money.”

“No! Because the bottom line, Matthew, is that there are some things money just can’t buy. You can’t buy yourself an interstellar space ship because it’s not possible to build one with what we know. You can’t just read a couple of physics books and take a couple of tests and come back to me as if you’re some kind of expert on the subject. All you’ve got is book knowledge, Matthew. You don’t understand how long it takes to develop and engineer just a starwisp! And you can’t change the laws of physics.”

He stared at me, blue eyes unwavering. “Those are just obstacles that need to be overcome. So why don’t we overcome them?”

“Would you listen to yourself?” I was astounded by his ignorance. “Just imagine, just for a second. Put yourself in my shoes, would you? Do you realize how you come across? You just barge into my office, you stalk me, you stalk my employees, you stalk my family!” I huffed, pausing in mid-sentence to gather myself. Somehow, without realizing it in my quickly ascending white hot rage, I’d rounded the table that stood between us and was now standing face to face with him. His brow was furrowed as he tipped his chin to look up at me. I jabbed my finger against his chest. “I ought to have you arrested!”

Fear crept into his eyes for the briefest of moments and I saw him for what he was. Just a kid. He stammered incoherently. “P-please don’t-“

“Do you realize how neurotic you are?” My hands shook. “You’re asking me to send you to a star system that’s 40 light years away when we as an entire human species haven’t figured out yet how to send men to Mars. You claim to have all this money, yet you’re a kid!” I shook the transcript in his face. “To be frank, I’m not even sure how real this is, or if this is even your real name! Why should I trust anything you say when you come across completely delusional?? What do you even do? Do you even have a job?”

He hesitated before answering. “No.. But-”

I laughed sharply again, my anger rising to dangerous levels. I picked up the check and tore it into pieces. “That’s what I think about that. This is not real.” I jabbed my finger against his forehead and his eyebrows knit together and his eyes crossed as they followed my finger. A vertical vain popped out on his forehead, aligned perfectly with his enviable widows peak. I punctuated each word with a jab. “There is something broken up there! You are not grounded in reality!!”

There was a tangible silence that fell over the room, then. I breathed heavily, seething anger making my heart pound, my hands clammy, and my head buzzing. My finger was still resting on the vein on his forehead and for whatever reason, he was still staring indignantly back at me with those eyes, cobalt blue today. When he finally spoke, his tone was that of rebellion. “You don’t know a thing about me, but you’re quick to jump to conclusions. I thought a scientist would be more open to collecting data and looking at all the facts before coming to a reasonable conclusion. I thought you were different. I’m so disappointed.”

I dropped my hand, still glaring at him. I couldn’t give a rat’s arse about whether a crazy, delusional kid was angry with me or not. “Get out of here. And leave me alone. I don’t want to see you again.”

He began tossing his papers and books back into his box with far less care than he had brought them in. I noticed his hands were shaking. He placed his jacket over the top of the box and hefted it up. He glared at me as he headed for the door. “Just so you know, your project would have been completely funded, regardless. Too bad for your shortsightedness. Didn’t anyone teach you not to judge a book by its cover?”

“Didn’t anyone teach you the importance of first impressions?” I retorted with a sneer. I was being childish but I couldn’t seem to help myself. I just wanted him gone.

He shrugged as he reached for the door handle. “Your loss. And no, actually. I’ve been trying to muddle through it on my own.” He exited and let the door slam shut behind him. I strode over to the door and locked it behind him, before leaning against it with a heavy sigh. I was cooling down now from the incident and the anger I’d felt before was washed over with a sense of guilt and pity.

I finally stood with a sigh, remembering what he’d said when he’d first walked in. “This place was really big.” It was. And someone, somewhere, must have seen him and questioned who he was and what he was doing in unauthorized areas. After all, it’s hard to miss a tiny person carrying a large box.

After I was sure that he was long gone, I meandered down to the security office, extremely curious why no one had seemed to catch him coming and going in such a highly monitored area. Surely he’d been caught on camera somewhere. These sorts of thing were not taken lightly. Theft of explosive fuels stored on site was a very real concern for space ports, as much or even more so than commercial airports. With terrorism on the rise, the potential for extreme attacks involving a suborbiter were much riskier and dangerous than commercial airliners.

The security office was cool, and I stepped inside, gazing at the hundreds of screens that filled the entire wall. There wasn’t a place in this building that didn’t have a camera pointed at it except for inside the bathrooms. No corner was unwatched.

“Did any of you notice a kid carrying a large box at all in the last hour or so? Nineteen or so, black hair, skinny as a rail.” I asked the multiple security personnel sitting in the room. They all shook their heads, but seemed concerned.

“We can check the tapes,” one of them said. “Where can we start?”

“Hallway leading to my office,” I studied the images on the screens. “That one.” I pointed to an image of my hallway that flashed onto a screen. He pulled up the camera and rewound the recording. As the image on the screen moved in reverse, it flashed black for a moment. “What was that? Go back.”

The guard paused and pushed play. In the far distance of the hallway, Matthew could be seen for only a brief moment before the camera went black as he presumably passed. “What the hell…” he muttered.

Together, we pulled up more cameras, finding the path Matthew had taken based only on the black screen flashes. Every camera he passed went blank.

“That’s some kind of SLIder shit right there…” the guard muttered, referring to the bizarre phenomenon of street light interference that some people claimed to have when streetlights would turn off when they passed by.

The guards all exchanged glances before they got on the phone with the head of the security. My chest tightened. I felt as if I’d somehow tattled on Matthew and now he was going to get into trouble. For some reason it didn’t sit well with me.

“Hey,” I touched the shoulder of the guard on the phone, “Can I talk?” He passed the phone to me.

I don’t know what I was doing, or why I was doing it. Somehow I felt a need to protect Matthew that I couldn’t explain. It wasn’t like I understood why he somehow managed to turn cameras off when he passed by them. I didn’t even know if he was doing it on purpose or not.

“Listen, this is Dom Howard,” I said as a put the phone up to my ear. “It’s my nephew. I never believed him when he said that he experiences the SLIder phenomenon but it seems he really does and now I’ve seen proof. Please don’t take action. I’ll speak with him privately. I’m sure it wasn’t intentional. He gets really excited about this kind of stuff, yeah. I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

I felt dazed as I hung up the phone. I didn’t even know Matthew. Maybe his intents really were malicious. If so I had put the entire spaceport at risk and I would take full responsibility if something occurred. What I’d just done could cost me my entire reputation and potentially my career. I couldn’t think about that just now though. I thanked the guards and left. I needed to get out of there. I had to track Matthew down. As soon as I had tied up all my loose ends with work, I called over to the airport to check and see if Matthew was due out on any flights. He was not. He must have driven. Next, I tried calling Matthew himself with the number he had given me earlier. Disconnected. There was just no way this kid had any money if he couldn’t even keep his phone connected.

It was raining when I went outside to my car. Typical UK weather. I’d chosen to drive my more modest BMW X3 crossover on my trip out here, since I’d been here a week. I preferred the comforts of my own vehicle when I spent longer periods out in Newquay. Had it been a short day trip, I’d have flown and hired a car. But the five hour drive wasn’t too bad, once you got used to it.

I left the secured area and had not been driving long before I spotted ahead of me on the side of the road was some poor soul on a bike with some kind of makeshift trolley attached on the back. “Miserable day for a bike ride,” I muttered. But as I drew closer, I realized exactly who it was. Poor Matthew was completely soaked, having surrendered his jacket to protect his box from the elements instead of his tiny body. He looked cold and miserable. It seemed he didn’t have a job, he was probably homeless, no car, no money for a flight, no money for a train. Had he biked all the way here from London? That had to have taken a few days! I sighed and pulled over, lowering the passenger side window.

“Oi! Do you need a ride?” I called.


	4. Chapter 4

Matthew startled as I pulled along side him. He braked abruptly and while putting his feet down to slow and balance himself, he slipped off the wet seat of his red bicycle and crotched himself on the crossbar. I cringed. “Sorry!” I called, putting my car into park and getting out to assist him. He looked at me warily, half of his face scrunched up in pain though he was trying to stand as normally as he could.

“I’ll ride my bike,” he replied stubbornly.

“Mate, that’s crazy, are you seriously going to bike all the way to London?? Is that how you got here?? London’s got to be days away by bike! It’s supposed to rain the next few days, you’ll catch hypothermia!”

He arched an eyebrow. “Mate?”

Touché.

“Look, I’m sorry I was a bit of an arse back there, but I’m not going to let you bike all the way back to London in the rain. Why didn’t you drive?”

“I don’t drive. I don’t like cars.”

“Why not fly then, or take the train?”

“So the government can track where I am at all times? No thanks.”

Hmm. I stepped over to the makeshift trolley and took Matthew’s wet jacket off the top of the box and handed it to him while I loaded the box into the back seat. “Go on and get in and dry off. Can we get the front wheel off of the bike?” I asked, fiddling with the bike before discovering the wheel popped off easily. I unhitched the trolley and loaded the bike into the trunk. Matthew remained in the rain, just staring in confusion as I worked quickly. I eyed the trolley. It was large and awkward and clearly had been fashioned from an old shopping trolley. “Does this collapse in some way?”

He stared at me. “No.”

“Right. We’ll just… see if we can get this in the trunk… oh, if we lay the seat down flat-“

“NO!” he shouted. “Where am I going to sit?”

I looked at him. “In the front with me, silly.”

He shook his head. “I want to sit in the back.”

Right… odd. “Well, we can’t just leave it here.”

Matthew continued to stare at me, then grabbed the trolley and some how pinned it into the unused hitch platform on the back of my car.

“That looks _ridiculous._ ” A BMW sport vehicle dragging a lightweight pram behind it.

Matthew folded his arms. “If I have to ride in a car, then this is the way it is.”

“Hopefully it doesn’t fall apart.”

“Are you questioning my craftsmanship?”

I stared at him. “To be frank, yes. But whatever. Get in.”

Matthew crawled into the back seat. I followed suite and climbed into the drivers seat. Peering in the rearview mirror I saw that he had belted himself into the very center of the second row and was currently working at the chin strap of his helmet, tightening it, apparently. It was ill fitting though, and no matter how tight he made the chin strap, the helmet slid around on his head and he had to keep pushing it up so it didn’t fall over his eyes. He looked especially nervous and was vibrating more than usual. I couldn’t see his feet, but I imagined they were jiggling a mile a minute. He kept rubbing his hands over his face.

“I feel a bit like a cab driver with you in the back like that,” I said, amusement trickling into my voice. He didn’t answer and just stared straight ahead. I guess he _really_ didn’t like cars. “You’ll have to tell me where to go, all right?” I glanced back up in the mirror and he nodded stiffly.

I pressed the clutch and put the vehicle in gear, easing on the accelerator. My shoe was still wet from the rain though, and it slipped off the clutch faster than I’d meant for it to. The car lurched but I accelerated so the engine wouldn’t kill. There was a loud screech and a thump from behind me and I glanced back to see Matthew had his hands slammed flat against the roof, his eyes wide and chest heaving.

“Mate, calm down, my foot slipped off the clutch. It made a rough shift. Everything’s fine. It’s just because my shoe was wet.”

He grunted, pulling his arms back down by his sides, where he held them stiffly. As I eased back on to the road and into traffic I made sure to be extra careful with my shifting so it was very smooth, but the tension emanating from the backseat was absolutely palpable. It was about a five hour drive back to the city, if traffic was good and I tried to make small talk with Matthew, but the only thing he said was to “pay attention to the road and stop being a distracted driver.” I sighed, reaching to turn the radio on instead but he screeched at me for taking my hand off the wheel. With Matthew tensing every time we passed another car, I knew this was going to be the longest drive back to London I’d ever experienced. I wondered how he could ever expect to fly in a _spaceship_ if he couldn’t even handle a car, but I kept that to myself.

As we neared the city he began dictating directions to his house and as we got nearer, I noticed the neighborhoods started looking more and more run down. We were entering parts of town that had in recent years fallen into economic collapse. Low income areas had become infested with high crime and little enforcement on housing maintenance. I frowned. He had _no_ money. There was no way. We passed street after street of low income row houses, and his street was no different. Lengths of uninterrupted, dilapidated terraces. But for one. And I knew, without him needing to tell me, that that house was his. He confirmed it only seconds later. Like a rebel standing its ground, the house stood alone, keeping a stubborn hold as the neighborhood around it was morphed into indistinguishable carbon copies decades back. Yet there stood this home, unique in it’s older architecture, free standing with no other neighbor touching it’s walls. It was in rough repair, even in comparison to the others around it, dirty with peeling plaster and an overgrown bush covering nearly the entire front of the house. As I examined it closer there were a few things that stood out. He had a small homemade windmill mounted in the backyard that I could see poking over the roof. A goofy looking thing, made with what appeared to be snow shovels oscillating parallel to the ground instead of perpendicular like most windmills. And the roof itself looked oddly more healthy than the roofs of the surrounding houses.

“Are those _solar panels_?” I asked, peering at the peculiar way the roof shone. It looked like any other tiled roof but for the blue sheen.

“Yep-“ Matthew said, as he hurried out of the car. I half expected him to kiss the ground as soon as he was out but he didn’t. His entire demeanor changed though and he was back to his smiley self. He had removed his helmet and was fixing his hair. The dampness of the air combined with how much his helmet had been sliding around on his head had more or less caused his hair to explode into a fluffy mess that I doubted he was going to be able to tame.

“I’ve never seen anything like those before,” I said as I stepped out of the car to get a better look. Solar panels were relatively common in England, but were unusual for a neighborhood like this. And these weren’t solar panels. These were solar tiles. They just looked like… any other roof. It was actually really cool. “How do those compare to other solar panels?” I asked, intrigued. I had solar panels on my own roof and we had a field out at the spaceport as well. “You’ve got them on the North side too?”

“Ah yeah… I just wanted everything to match so it wasn’t so obvious, they help a little during mid day, not really worth paying extra for energy wise, but… made me feel better. But they’re pretty decent. In the summer sometimes I get a check from the electric company cos I’m providing them with more electricity than I use. Could be the windmill too though.”

“Huh,” I pondered. Matthew was full of little surprises, wasn’t he? I snapped a picture of his house and the funny looking windmill with my phone. It seemed Matthew was a bit of an engineer himself.

“Would you like to come in for tea?”

I hesitated, remembering just how it was that he liked to drink his tea. “As long as you let me make it…” Matthew giggled a little and lead the way through the creaking gate to the back side of his house. It was still raining, so the shelter of the saggy porch was welcome. I could get a better view of the homemade windmill from back here and found he actually had several rounds of snow shovels stacked together one above the other. I took more pictures. It was actually quite ingenious. It also seemed he was quite an avid gardener, his whole back yard was just a big vegetable garden and he had even built himself a small green house in the back corner of the yard. Matthew busied himself with unlocking the many locks on his rather industrial looking door. I waited while he unlatched each one and let me in.

“I don’t normally let people come inside,” he said as he pushed the door open. I peered in cautiously, not entirely sure what to expect. Matthew stepped in first and I carefully followed as he locked the door after me. “Don’t feel like I’m locking you in, yeah?” he said, eying me as I nervously watched him lock the door. “I just live in a bit of a shite neighborhood. ’S not safe to leave the doors unlocked. I already have to replace the glass in my greenhouse at least once every season…always taking my tomatoes…”

“No no… I understand,” I assured him. Honestly, if I had to be in any of the houses in this neighborhood, I knew that it was Matthew’s I would prefer over any of them. I could at least trust Matthew that much.

“They generally leave me alone though. The neighbors. They all think I’m weird.”

Imagine.

“Some of the kids think it’s funny to put little bombs in my mailbox. Almost lost my hand once. I use the post office now.”

“Yes. Funny joke. Ha ha.” I felt concern for his well-being welling in the pit of my stomach. Someone who wasn’t quite all there was in danger in a place like this. People might take advantage of him and hurt him and think it was funny because he wasn’t well.

“Nah, it’s alright. Can learn a thing or two about rockets from those little bombs. I disassembled a couple of them,” he mentioned offhandedly as he moved into the kitchen.

“That’s a bit dangerous, you should be careful with that.” Never mind. There was little good my concern could do for someone who purposely did idiotic things. I examined the room around me. It was small and dimly lit with a squeaky floor. The wallpaper was yellowing, and some of it was peeling away, revealing crumbling plaster beneath. There were a couple of dishes in the sink and the whole house needed a good dusting. It was obviously a very old house, and I knew they could be hard to keep clean, but he didn’t seem too concerned with basic maintenance. Matthew put a kettle of water on to boil and pulled out his tea and sugar.

“No, no,” I said, gently taking the bowl of sugar away from him. “I’ll make the tea. You go dry off.”

Matthew nodded and disappeared. I looked through his cupboards for some teacups. It took me awhile to find them, and not after I had stumbled across some mouse traps and roaches skittering away into the deeper depths of the cupboards. I jumped back with a little yelp. “Oh God..” I muttered, feeling a shiver move up my spine. Shuddering, I moved about the kitchen with more care, sure not to touch more than was necessary should I disturb any other critters out of their hiding places. I was definitely grateful for my own, much more suitable and sanitary living conditions. I washed the teacups again, just to be safe and sniffed the tea carefully before I prepared it. It seemed fine and was steeping by the time Matthew came back, his hair now resembling a hedgehog because he’d towel dried it. He didn’t much seem to care about the order of his hair though. Or his clothes. The outfit he’d changed into wasn’t any better than the one he’d been wearing before. A baggy jumper three sizes too big over a pair of loose track pants. I shuddered to think what creatures might have made his bureau a home. As it was I could see a hole in his jumper that looked suspiciously like a mouse had chewed through it. I set a cup of tea down in front of Matthew as he leaned against the counter island. Without him even asking, I slid the bowl of sugar toward him, while I sipped cautiously at my tea as it was. He went straight to work pouring teaspoonful after teaspoonful of sugar into his cup.

“You really ought to look into getting some sort of exterminator in here. You’ve got some critter problems.” Some big critter problems.

Matthew waved a long fingered hand. “I know… It’s just that I don’t like people coming into my house. I do raid bomb them regularly, though. I just… I just really don’t want anyone messing with my computers and stuff. It’s a trade off I suppose.”

“Not sure it’s in your favor… They carry disease! You could get seriously sick and they get in your clothes and against your body and lay eggs, ugh. Mate, it’s disgusting.” I shuddered violently, thoroughly grossed out. Then I realized something. “Ugh. _Ugh!_ You probably got that shit in my office! In my _car!”_ Oh no. I was going to need to take my BMW to an auto detailer _immediatel_ y and have it steam cleaned _._ What if some was on _me!_ I would definitely need to throw away my clothes as soon as I got home. I shuddered again, feeling like creepy crawlies were all over me now. “If you don’t want anyone else in your house how come you let me in?”

“That’s cos I wanted to _show_ you!”

“Show me? Show me what?” It couldn’t possibly be the house he wanted to show me because more than anything I just wanted to get _out_ of it. The solar shingles and the windmill were neat. Not things I was used to seeing in the city, for certain. But I didn’t need to come inside to see those things. Had I known I would risk bringing roaches home with me I would not have stepped further than the gate.

“My computers!” he exclaimed, spilling a bit of tea over his front. “Oops-” he mumbled while he tried to brush the spilled tea off himself with his free hand while his other still held the full teacup. I watched as it shook with his movements and threatened to spill its contents again. I reached out to steady his cup and he pulled it back with a little “Oh.” He moved for the sugar spoon again and I pulled the bowl away from him.

“I think that’s enough sugar for your tea,” I said gently. He was already plenty excitable. “What’s so special about your computers?”

“Well,” he began, pulling at the sleeves of his oversized jumper, then pinched at his nose. He seemed to touch his face a lot when he was nervous. “When I said earlier…that check wasn’t real…” He paused, his eyes searching my face. “Please listen to me. Please. Just let me talk okay?”

I rolled my eyes internally, but nodded, sipping my tea while one of my eyebrows lifted skeptically.

He continued, stuttering, “I meant- I meant- I meant- I didn’t have that much money in _that account_. I was pretty confident that you wouldn’t try to put it in the bank. I guess I counted on it a bit. To keep your attention. Cos…cos… I know what you see, it doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

I snorted in agreement. Matthew’s nervous demeanor changed immediately. He straightened his small frame and shot a fiery glare at me.

“You don’t believe me. _I_ _get it already._ I know what you think of me. You’ve made it _quite_ obvious you think I’m some lessor being. Which makes you a right prick, by the way. I’m _trying_ to _show_ you! I’m _trying_ to tell you but it’s _really hard_ when you refuse to _listen!_ And if not for _any other reason_ I would appreciate just an _ounce_ of your respect because you are in _my_ house now. Understand?”

I glanced down guiltily because he wasn’t wrong. “I understand. Sorry. I promise I’ll listen. Go on.”

“And it _is_ my house. Completely. I own it. And it’s paid off. Entirely,” he added as a side note, as if for some reason that was supposed to impress me. Though, truth be told, I was still paying off my own house, so even if the house wasn’t much, he did have _that_ one up on me. Though having a mortgage payment hanging over my head each month still felt more comforting than living in a roach-infested shamble of a house. Matthew’s gaze met mine and we held it steadily. His blue eyes tried to read my sincerity. My gray eyes tried to read his sanity. We studied each other in silence for a moment. Finally he pushed back from the counter. “Follow me,” his voice gruffly filtered to my ears as he passed into the next room. I set my tea down and hurried after him obediently.

Matthew talked while he walked, very much in charge now. “Having money is dangerous,” he explained. “It attracts a lot of unwanted attention. Especially government attention. Y’know, like people start wondering where the money came from and dictating how it should be spent. They start to watch you and shit.” We passed through a short hallway with wooden floors that badly needed refinishing. The sitting room was to the right. It looked enough like a normal sitting room except for the sagging furniture and the rug which had spots worn clear to the wooden floor. Matthew led me up a set of very narrow, steep and creaky stairs. There were two rooms upstairs. One, which from a quick peek inside, appeared to act as his actual sleeping space. Duvet tossed in a haphazard pile on the bed, sheets peeling from the corners of the mattress. Likely infested with bed bugs. I shivered again. He was taking me to the second room, however. He kept the door to this room closed and locked, and when we stepped inside I was met with a warm blast of air to the face and the distinct sound of whirring computer fans. There was an active window air conditioner, which cooled the room, though with the cool temperatures outside, I wondered why he didn’t simply open the windows. There were at least five computers that I could see in the room, maybe more, but some weren’t hooked up to monitors.

“I try to detract attention to myself,” Matthew rambled on, his hands flying while he talked. “For example, the amount of electricity this whole setup requires is pretty high. At least, higher than the average one person household would require. Continuously high electricity bills could probably attract attention. Law enforcement, maybe, looking for meth labs or something, I dunno.” He shrugged his boney shoulders. “So that’s what the solar panels and the windmill are for. They don’t do fantastic here, obviously. It’s a small house with a small roof.” He shrugged again, his nerves starting to make an appearance again. “But together they generally offset the bill enough to make it appear normal. I’d love to get off the grid entirely, but I’m not sure how possible that is. And it might attract attention from a different crowd. Environmentalists maybe. I’ve got a diesel generator down in the basement for the months when the solar panels and windmill don’t help enough.”

Every time that I’d thought his paranoia couldn’t possibly be more intense, I was proven wrong. The depth of it never ceased to surprise me. He certainly did go to some extreme lengths for something as simple as an electric bill. I must have been looking at him as though he’d grown a third head because he seemed to pick up on it, his confidence losing steam quickly.

He shuffled over to a computer and jiggled the mouse to wake it up. “I… I really wanna be the first to achieve interstellar travel,” he glanced at me. “I know you think its impossible, but I’m certain there’s a way. This planet is fucked as long as we stay in charge. No one can work together, we just fight and bicker over the smallest things and refuse to face the huge problems staring us in the face. I wanna _get out there._ I’ve been dreaming about it… since…always. Every bit of money I’ve saved is going to go to interstellar travel. I’ve spent nearly a decade trying to find the right person who would actually be willing to give this a chance. Someone I can trust.” he glanced back at me. “I don’t- I don’t trust a lot of people… I don’t really trust _anyone…._ But…I want to trust you… I feel like I can trust you…. I don’t know why…I think you can help me…”

Truly, he was barking up the wrong tree. “Mate…” I started. “That’s-“

I thought I saw a trace of fear flicker through his eyes. “Wait- I haven’t even shown you yet… you don’t trust me either. So- I want to show you. Look.” He did some things on the computer and then turned the screen towards me. I squinted at it, trying to understand what I was looking at. Then I realized. He was showing me his bank account. My eyes scanned over the screen. His name was listed at the top with his account number wide open for me to see. And the numbers were _massive._

“What the fuck…”

He started clicking through different windows. It wasn’t even his only bank account. He pulled up multiple more, each account with a higher number than the last.

“You don’t have that much money. No one has that much money. If you had this kind of money you wouldn’t live in this fucking dump. You could easily live in a nicer house in a nicer neighborhood and you wouldn’t even notice. It wouldn’t even make a _dent.”_

He stared at me, his eyes crossing ever so slightly, looking nothing but desperate at this point. He pulled out his wallet and handed me his ID, then disappeared out of the room, literally leaving me with full access to all of his accounts. I could rob him blind if I’d really wanted to. He came back a few minutes later with his passport, and even his birth certificate, though he held tightly to that. I compared everything. He really was who he said he was, unless this was all fake.

“I still don’t believe you.”

He set his jaw, clicking through to a funds transfer page and stepped away from the computer, giving me full access. “Go ahead then. Transfer some money into your account. Take as much as you want.”

I squinted at him, then held up my phone and set it to record. “Say that again.”

He looked straight at the camera, and the screen flashed black. “You can transfer as much money as you want into your own personal bank account.”

“Wait wait wait….” I moved my phone away from him, the camera flickering back on. I moved it back in front of him and it went black again. “How are you doing this?”

“Doing what?”

“When I try to record you, the camera goes black. You did it at the spaceport too. To all the security cameras. I checked them.”

He looked confused. “I did?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh God… I.. I had a near death experience when I was a kid… ever since, sometimes I do weird things to electronics when I’m nervous. Sorry, sorry. I can’t wear a watch, see?” He held up his wrist to show it was clear of any watches. “They stop working. I don’t know why. Sometimes street lights go out when I walk by them too. I don’t know… it doesn’t always happen… but when I’m nervous… it’s really frustrating with my computers…” I glanced behind him and noticed that the screens were flickering too.

“Okay well… geez you don’t need to be so nervous. Calm down.”

He waved his hand in front of his face, fanning himself. “Sorry, sorry. I’m scared you’ll… expose me… or something.”

I sighed. It was true. I couldn’t make any promises.

“Well? Come forward completely then. Are you doing anything illegal?”

“N-no. I don’t think so. I just… I just go to a lot of lengths to keep my privacy is all. I don’t like people watching- watching me I don’t want the government to watch me?” He was obviously quite stressed and was pacing madly and pulling at his hair. “I don’t trust them. Y’know? They’re using us all! They- they- it’s like 1984! Trust no one-“

“Okay so you’re really paranoid and probably need to get some help with that…”

“No!” he was almost in tears. “No, it’s real! Believe me!”

I sighed again. He was definitely harmless, but also definitely mentally ill. But he had a lot of money. If that was actually real.

“Okay, calm down. Just, sit down. Please. I’m not going to tell on you, does that make you feel better?”

He nodded and sat, breathing heavily, trying to calm down. One by one the computers all powered themselves back up again.

“Okay. So how does this work?”

“VPNs.”

Well. That was rather simple.

“Swedish bank accounts.”

“Tax evasion?” I asked.

“No! Oh no. I would never do that. That’s illegal. I pay my taxes.”

“So you give all your information to the government, then.”

“Some of it, I have to, yeah.”

“So some of what you do is illegal.”

He was quiet. “I pay my due taxes. Look.” He left the room, coming back with a box of files and handed me a file of his tax returns. I flipped through it briefly. Besides being overwhelmingly shocked by the size of the numbers on the papers, it all seemed to check out okay.

“But then, the government knows how much money you actually have.”

He shook his head. “Only what I earn. That’s what you have to report.”

Good _lord._ He turned back to the computers and logged in to them and began typing furiously, doing things that looked like what I could only describe as “hacker shit.” After a few minutes he had his bank accounts pulled up again. He turned to me.

“This isn’t fake and I can prove it. Go ahead and transfer the money. Use it for your star wisp. Whatever you need. Consider it an investment in your project. In return I have your trust. Yes?”

“That’s loaded and the best I can say is, I’ll try, and I’ll use my own judgement if I feel action needs to be taken. Understand?”

He closed his eyes and nodded.

“And I need to protect myself, do you understand? Legally, I need to protect myself.”

He nodded again.

“So lets make a contract, okay?”

He nodded again.

“May I use your computer? To make a contract?”

He nodded again and I sat down, typing up in my best legalese my conditions. Nothing could be truly official without being notarized, but I wasn’t going to do anything too crazy right now.

“Can I film?” I asked. “Are you calm enough?”

He nodded. “I think so.”

I took my phone out and began recording, pointing the camera directly at Matthew. It stayed on. Good. I printed the document off and filmed myself signing it as well as Matthew signing it. I also had him place his fingerprint next to his signature. I covered the fingerprint with some tape for safe keeping.

No black screens. So far so good.

I held the camera up and filmed as I entered my account information and transferred exactly one pound into my company’s bank account, then immediately checked my account to see it show up as a pending transfer. It was there. I shook as I stopped the recording and tucked my phone into my inner jacket pocket.

The light of the day was fading below the horizon and Matthew’s face had fallen into a computer lit shadow. He was breathing heavily, he glanced at me. “I’m gonna have to kill you now,” he whispered.

I stared at him, my heart stopping and breath hitching. I was such an idiot. I should have known. I took in my surroundings, realizing how I’d walked right into his trap.

“I’m just kidding,” he whispered again, then laughed nervously as he leaned against the wall, nearly collapsing. “Please don’t show anyone that video— I promise I’m not going to say you’ve stolen it— you could ruin me— they could come after me. I’m trusting you—“ he laughed again, but it was not a humorous laugh. He was near hysteria. “I need your pact— Please—“

I felt uncomfortable even having one pound in my bank account from such a dubious source. I knew what I needed to know. The money was real. It was there. “I’m going to put the money back,” I said, in as much a state of shock as he was, mechanically moving through the motions to transfer the money back.

“You don’t have to.”

“I have to.”

“Are you going to tell on me?”

“I- I don’t know. I don’t understand. I don’t understand how you can have this much money. How is it legal? Who have you stolen from?”

His face was hardly visible where he sat on the floor, too far in the shadows for even the blue light from the computer to really light his features. “I’m really good at poker…”

Oh that was too much. “You won this kind of money playing poker,” I stated flatly. Not a question. A statement.

He giggled nervously. “No. But you can learn a lot from playing poker. If you’re good at poker you can be good at a lot of things. The stock market, for instance. A lot is… inheritance. I won the lotto once too. That helped. Gave me a lot to invest with, which made my returns really worth while.”

“You’ve won the lotto. How’d that go for you, with your trying to stay out of the public eye? How _old_ were you?”

He laughed again, some life coming back into his voice, becoming more conversational, “Awh no it was shit! I had to sneak around everywhere! Even getting into my own house! I did pretty well with it. Though I had to move. Which was fine. I was eighteen. And…” he trailed off. “I needed to move anyway.”

I finished the transaction and sat back.

“Dominic?”

I closed my eyes.

“Please just… when you get home… do whatever you want with the video, put it on a flash drive, a disc, whatever, just… can you delete it from your phone…? They look at that shit… don’t put it on a cloud…” I could hear him moving and then the room flooded with light. He had the sleeve of his jumper stuffed into his mouth, his eyes wild with fear.

I took a deep breath and held up my phone and showed it to him as I deleted the video. Tears sprang to his eyes in relief. “Th-th-thank you,” he whispered.

“This doesn’t mean anything though, Matthew. This isn’t a promise to help you with your request. You can trust me to keep this a secret. It’s clear you trust me a great deal. But it is in no way a promise for anything. Understood?”

He nodded.

“I need to go.”

He nodded again and I stood. He only stepped aside to let me out. Once I reached the stairs I started to run. There was still a part of me that feared he could get dangerous out of sheer fear. He was paranoid enough. Anyone would be, with that kind of money, and now it made sense. He didn’t come after me though. I made it safely to my car. When I looked up at the house one more time, I noticed the upstairs curtain flick closed. I drove away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello. I feel it should be said at this point that this is a story that I have been working on for a very very long time. Since the Resistance era. It's gone through many many changes in that time period. Much of it fleshed out in my head, a lot of it written down, a lot of it left to go. Last year, I had to do a major overhaul of the whole story and took a year long break from it. What is here, is everything that I've rewritten since that overhaul. Some of you might find it familiar, as a bit of the old part was posted at MuseSlash. For some of you it's entirely new. For me, it's mostly all new because of how many changes I needed to make. But much for the better, I think! From this point forward though, everything that comes after should be new for everyone. I look forward to riding on this journey with you all and I hope you enjoy it as much as I have come to love this story.


	5. Chapter 5

Matthew became a much more predominant figure in my life after that.He’d been serious about funding me, and I was serious about taking him up on it.However, I wasn’t keen to his preferred under the table methods.I still wasn’t sure that he operated entirely within the confines of the law, despite what he’d told me.Based on what I knew about him, I believed he probably had his own moral code and beliefs that were warped by paranoia and he probably manipulated whatever loopholes he could find to toe the line of right and wrong.If he wanted to fund me, we would be setting up our agreement legally whether he liked it or not.And he didn’t.Of course he didn’t.Meetings with lawyers freaked him out and I could tell he chose his words very carefully around them, which actually made me pretty envious.Perhaps if he’d shown me such professionalism early on, we’d have had a much smoother start. 

 

Hundreds of pages of legal documents were written up and required signing and notary and that process in itself was long enough on any normal day.However, going through this process with Matthew proved to be much more challenging than it was with any other financial contract I’d ever signed before.Much to mine and the lawyers’ chagrin, Matthew insisted on reading every single word before signing.He asked a lot of questions about certain wording, and made the lawyers rewrite and reword a lot of items before he was satisfied.What should have taken just a few days, took weeks to be done to Matthew’s satisfaction. 

 

And so our strange partnership began. 

 

I tried to explain to him that he did not need to be involved in every single aspect of what I was working on, but he insisted and who was I to argue when he was funding everything?He let me do what I needed to do though, and beyond the nightmare that the legal contracts had been, it was truly one of the most freeing kind of grant work I’d ever done.I was never told where or how I could spend the money.I never had to write up proposals or send progress reports.I wasn’t being constantly directed. His near constant presence made it feel like I had a student working under me though. He asked a lot of questions, and came back the next day with new knowledge that he hadn’t had the day before, as if he’d been doing homework.Before long, we were having actual scientific conversations, with engaging back and forth that he could actually keep up with.I was impressed with the speed in which he could learn things.Soon, he was making contributions that exceeded his finances.Some of his suggestions were useable and I could credit him with intellectual property in publications regarding the project.He preferred his name not be used and that I take all the credit, which didn’t surprise me in the least.

 

He kept a strange schedule, though.There were stretches of time where I wouldn’t see him for a few days or even a week, sometimes two.He wouldn’t tell me where he was going or when he’d be leaving, but would just do as he pleased.I hadn’t realized that I’d counted on him being a reliable employee after awhile, but I could hardly lecture him about it.He _wasn’t_ an employee, technically, and he didn’t need to be here for work to continue.He did his own thing whether I liked it or not. 

 

It was after one of these stints away that he returned with a travel itinerary in hand.We were apparently going to Hawaii, tomorrow, and part of that travel would include traveling by, you guessed it, suborbital flight. 

 

“You’ve got to have a license for that,” I stated flatly. 

 

Suborbital flight was not something just anyone could do on a whim. There were medical and physical tests one had to pass in order to obtain a special suborbital flight license and these tests had to be taken annually in order to maintain validity of the license. There were military level training courses one had to take to learn how to physically handle high levels of G-forces. G-force induced loss of consciousness, known as G-LOC, is a very real problem that can occur in suborbital flight.To obtain a license, one has to learn the special breathing techniques that help prevent G-LOC. 

 

“What makes you so sure I don’t have one,” he countered, pulling one out of his wallet immediately and waving it in my face. 

 

Since its creation, the suborbital flight license had become a bit of an item of prestige, much like the Centurion Black Card.After each flight, a stamp would be placed in the license, similar to a passport.The more stamps one’s license held, the higher the prestige.Suborbital flight was used heavily for ambassadors on business travels and so they had many stamps and many renewed licenses, but for the average space tourist, it was a novelty to have just the one license and one stamp.Afterward it would be framed and hung on a wall.No suborbital trip was cheap, ringing in around 10K quid a trip, not including the licensing and training fees, which typically cost a few thousand in itself annually.If one could afford it at all, it tended to be a once or twice in a life time opportunity.

 

Matthew’s license was brand new and had zero stamps. 

 

“I’m not going to Hawaii. I’ve got a business to run, I can’t just up and leave like that with zero warning, Matthew.”

 

“You can.I’ve made sure your schedule is cleared, don’t worry.” 

 

“Yeah, but what in the ever loving fuck are we going to do in _Hawaii?_ ”

 

“We have business with the Keck observatory.”

 

“Keck? _Keck?”_ What in the _world_ did he need to do at _Keck?_

 

 _“_ Keck,” he repeated.

 

He had me.Keck had been on my bucket list for a long long time.How could I refuse?“I’ve always wanted to visit Keck.”

 

“Then that’s just icing on the cake, isn’t it?”

 

“You win.This time,” I muttered.

 

 

~*~*~*~

 

 

We landed in Cornwall-Newquay at exactly five am on a private jet that Matthew had hired.Or owned, no one could be quite certain with him.The moment he stepped out onto the tarmac and saw the spaceplane for the first time, Matthew stopped short.I looked at him, his face filled with awe and wonder, looking as much the child that he actually was.Surprisingly enough, he was less of a kid than I’d originally thought.Through the mountains of paperwork we’d been through, it’d surprised me to learn that he was actually 25.Before that, I’d seriously wondered if he was even a legal adult.He’d had to be, since he’d won the lotto.But even that I’d wondered about.Still, he was fourteen years my junior, and to me, he was still a kid.

 

“Is that it?It’s so different than I’d expected,” he murmured.“There’s no rockets…”

 

I looked at him, surprised.In all the research he’d done, the stalking of me and my employees and my business, the thousands of books he’d read, the things he’d studied and learned, had he not once looked into the mechanics of suborbital flight?Not even for preparation of his license training?I thought back on my training and realized that there was no part of it that required he know or understand how suborbital flight worked.He was admittedly brilliant, but that was a pretty massive oversight on his part.

 

“Have- have you not- read anything about this?At all?Not once?How…?”I asked incredulously.

 

He shook his head, still staring at the plane.“I had other focuses…How does it work?Why does it look so funny?”

 

I shook my head, baffled by this strange man and the ways in which he surprised me. “What you’re looking at is the suborbital craft attached to the launch plane.”

 

He continued to look at it completely baffled.“How can it get to space if it’s just an airplane?”He looked disappointed.“We won’t really be in space will we….”

 

“No. It really does reach space.By all definitions, when you reach 58.5 km you’re in space. We usually get to about 60 km or so.There’s no more atmosphere where we go.It’s an air launch, Matthew” I explained further.“It takes off like a regular airplane and carries the suborbital craft high up into the stratosphere.Once we get to altitude, the orbital craft is released and we take off to suborbit.It’s more advantageous than launching from the ground because it saves us fuel and cuts back on weight of the craft.That’s why it looks more like an airplane than a space shuttle.There _are_ some tiny rockets on the back though.” 

 

“How does it land then?Can’t it burn up in re-entry?”Matt asked wide-eyed. 

 

“We don’t get high enough for that.We’re not in true orbit, like satellites and the ISS.Basically, we skim the top of the atmosphere and float back to the surface like a feather. That’s why the wings are designed that way.”

 

“Oh wow.That’s really pretty ingenious isn’t it?” 

 

“Yeah, it is.”I started walking across the tarmac toward the plane.Matthew still lagged behind though still staring in awe at the majestic and strange airplane-like structure.“Matthew,”I called.“Are you coming?”

 

“Yeah,” he huffed, dragging his small suitcase behind him.“Hey, how come you always call me Matthew?”

 

I looked at him in surprise.“You never stated you preferred otherwise.It’s how you introduced yourself so that’s why I call you it.”

 

“Oh.That’s really nice.Most people just assume and call me Matt, which you can, I don’t mind.It just surprises me that anyone would bother with my full name.Some people can’t even bother to _spell_ Matt and I just become M - A - T. Like a doormat,” he scoffed.“Bullies.”

 

I snorted, but before I could respond, Matt had bolted away from me, suddenly racing down the tarmac with his suitcase bouncing behind him.My old friend from uni and a real certified astronaut whom had spent actual time in the International Space Station, Christopher Wolstenholme, had emerged from the hanger.He was the pilot of the suborbital craft, which he had so fondly nicknamed Justine, after a miscarried child that would have been his and his wife’s seventh. 

 

I watched as Matt nearly crashed into Chris, having morphed into an incoherent fanboy.Evidently, Matt knew exactly who Chris was and required no introduction.I let him have his moment until Chris began to look a little overwhelmed by Matt’s intensity. 

 

“Hey, mate,” I greeted him with a little wave.“I see you’ve met Matt?”

 

Matt was staring up at Chris, clearly starstruck and shaking.

 

“Wait, can I get a picture with you?” he blurted while he shoved his phone into my hands and immediately posed with Chris who looked utterly perplexed by this kind of attention.He’d always been the type that kept to himself, and despite his relative fame with being an astronaut, tried to stay out of the limelight as much as possible. It was rare that he ran into a such a super fan.I smiled apologetically at Chris and took their picture and handed the phone back to Matt. 

 

“Aw I have my eyes closed…” Matt muttered, looking at his phone. 

 

“Here,” I said pushing Matt toward the plane.“Let’s let Chris do his work here and we’ll get loaded up.” 

 

“Oooo,” Matt murmured, moving forward and touching everything he possibly could.I pushed him up into the plane and loaded our suitcases into the storage area.Everything had to be strapped down.There was absolutely no wiggle room for shifting objects of any kind in space travel. Matt was moving about the cabin, touching everything.He’d wandered over to the captain’s seat and was inspecting all of the gauges and instruments and taking pictures.I hurried over, yanking his hand away from the control panel just as he was about to start touching buttons. 

 

“Yeah, you’re not going to want to be touching any of that,” I lectured him sternly.“Come on, sit down, would you?”

 

We both found a seat and I proceeded to strap myself into the complicated six point harness system.I was beginning to feel quite nervous now.Obviously, being a cofounder of this whole program, I had my fair share of experience with being a passenger on these suborbital flights.Seeing the Earth from space was an experience that never lost its thrill or wonder. But the travel itself was comparable to that of a rollercoaster.Either you were a rollercoaster person, or you weren’t.I wasn’t.And this was a very extreme kind of thrill ride that had very real risks.Nerves would always be part of the package with me.

 

We’d managed to make suborbital flight fairly safe, but in the beginning it hadn’t been.There had been just enough crashes and fatalities that created many legal and financial roadblocks to making it a standard form of travel and tourism. People were scared of it for a very long time.But more people were curious and eager to go to space. It still posed risks, of course, though those were much slimmer now.The physical strain on the body was probably the biggest risk these days. If someone wasn’t physically in good health, a suborbital flight very well could kill them.This was why contracts had to be signed waiving us responsibility in case of such an event and the licenses had to be renewed annually.Luckily for Matt, in my line of work, it was absolutely mandatory to keep my license up to date.Had he asked just anyone to drop everything in a day to take a suborbital flight, the chances of them having a valid license was slim to none.He’d probably known this already though.Of course he did.He knew everything about me.

 

While I’d been busy fussing with my nerves, Matt had been eagerly chattering away across the aisle from me.I’d not been paying any attention to what he was saying, and it seemed he’d not noticed that I wasn’t listening.He was still clumsily fumbling with his harness system, the belts twisted and one of his crotch straps was on the wrong side of his leg.I sighed.I had absolutely no intention of assisting him with crotch straps.I would leave that to Chris. 

 

Eventually I noticed that Matt had quieted down next to me.He was quiet in the way that he was quiet in cars.That one foot jiggling in such a way that it made his entire body appear to vibrate.“No helmet?” I asked, observing that the one thing he always wore in the car was apparently not necessary in flight.Interesting.

 

“Statistically speaking, flying is much safer than driving is.” 

 

“Statistically speaking, suborbital flight hasn’t been around long enough to have enough data to make that argument,” I countered.

 

“Statistically speaking, if we crash while flying, we’re probably going to die so what does it matter?” 

 

Touché. 

 

Soon, Chris boarded the craft and doing interior safety checks while making amiable chat with us.He completely undid Matt’s entire harness system, made him stand up, and started over.Matt immediately turned back into a fanboy as soon as Chris came over, asking him a million questions about what it was like to live in the international space station for a year. 

 

“Do you really have to wear diapers?”

 

Chris rolled his eyes.I knew he’d been asked this question a million times but he was good natured about it.“Yes.The launch process is many hours long as is the docking processes.We do wear them just in case.”

 

“Oh wow… have you ever seen an alien? Do you believe in them?”

 

Chris chuckled, “Never seen one, no.But I think the probability that there’s life out there somewhere is pretty high.”

 

Matt seemed satisfied with this answer and Chris moved on to business, reminding us to keep our feet pressed flat on the ground and to remember the breathing techniques when we reached high G’s.He got himself situated and put on his headset, speaking indistinctlyto air traffic control and the pilot of the launch craft. 

 

I leaned my head back, feeling my nerves spike all over again.I glanced at Matt.“You ready?”

 

He nodded, but I could tell he was plenty nervous too.

 

“Are you excited?”

 

He grinned, flashing his tooth at me.“Yeah! I’m going to space!”

 

“We’re going to space,” I repeated as the plane began taxiing down the long runway, nothing ahead of us but the Atlantic ocean. 

 


	6. Chapter 6

It’s a common misconception, that distance from the Earth is what makes us weightless in space. Even while in orbit, we are falling toward the planet. But falling creates the illusion of weightlessness. We experience this on rollercoasters in the short moments of the first drop. The thing with orbits is if we move fast enough, the rate at which we are falling towards the Earth also matches the curvature of the Earth. And so we are caught in a constant loop, falling, falling and falling but never really getting closer to the planet. Technically. It works a lot like the coin vortexes that can be found at old arcades. Eventually the coin does fall into the hole as it loses speed. The international space station, for example, looses altitude every day but because it has rocket boosters, it can adjust in order to maintain orbit. The suborbital craft would neither gain the altitude nor the speed to maintain an orbit for a very long time. But long enough to experience space. And long enough to allow us to travel great distances in very short periods of time. 

The initial take off and flight up to 50,000 feet feels very much like any commercial airline flight does, except instead of maintaining that, the space plane would detach from the launch craft and the experience would shift from a calm passenger plane to a rocket launch. That was the worst part. And we’d reached altitude, so it was about to happen at any moment. My heart was racing as if I were sitting atop a rollercoaster, the brief moment of panic in which I would seriously consider getting off the ride because of how scared I was. Obviously not an option, either on a rollercoaster or in a spaceplane, but panic could convince you that you could do anything sometimes. Maybe Matt sensed it, or maybe he was just as nervous as I was, but suddenly he grabbed my hand across the aisle and squeezed tightly. It was against protocol, technically. We were supposed to hang on to the arms of our chairs and push down with our feet to help keep the flow of blood moving to our brains. But his hand gave me comfort, and it was a rule I was willing to break. At least the g-forces going up weren’t as strong as the g-forces coming back down.

Chris was announcing our detachment from the launch plane now and I exhaled sharply. I felt Matt give my hand a squeeze and then we were falling. The roar of Justine’s rockets was deafening as we began the near vertical climb, the pressure from the Gs growing against my chest. I pushed my feet even harder against the floor, my grip on Matt’s hand a vice. But so was his on mine. He let out a loud whoop as we accelerated toward space and I found myself smiling. I’d forgotten that this was his first time experiencing a launch. 

In three minutes we were there, skimming over the top of the ionosphere, no longer accelerating, our weight in a constant shift from the gravitational changes. Outside the window it was a stark black above and blue below. A sudden silence fell over us as Chris turned the rockets off. We were starting our free fall now and I felt a brief few moments of nausea as we shifted to weightlessness. At some point, Matt had let go of my hand and had pressed his face and hands to the glass. I’d expected more excited chatter from him, but he was quiet in his wonder. I turned and looked out my window as well. 

There was no getting used to the view of Earth from space. It’s an exquisite vision of all of humanity, animals and nature alike. I pulled out my phone and snapped a few pictures before Chris announced that we could unbuckle and experience null gravity and I did so, noting that Matt was struggling with his belts again. I reached over and helped him this time, giving him a smile. As he floated off his seat he laughed, did a little flip in the confined space and then returned to the window, more fascinated with the view than with the feeling of weightlessness. 

I couldn’t help but watch him as he watched the earth drifting below us, his graceful, long fingered hand pressed against the glass. His profile was surprisingly delicate, considering how strong his features were to look at head on. His dark, long eyelashes blinked across his cheeks as he looked on in wide-eyed splendor that in that moment struck me on a deeper level than the vision of our planet below us. I shook my head and turned back to look out my own window. What was I thinking? I needed to get it together. 

“Do you suppose we could see Trappist-1 from up here?” I heard Matt ask from behind me. I glanced up toward the blackness that had become only a thin line in my window, the Earth having taken up most of my view as the craft had tilted. Out Matt’s window, however, was a better view of the blackness of space. I moved over to his side, struggling to pull my view away from Egypt below us but we were moving fast over the Atlantic ocean and the landmass was quickly disappearing over the horizon. 

Next to Matt, I squinted into the blackness, the stars so much brighter from up here. I tried to conjure up my knowledge of constellations, but I wasn’t nearly as familiar with the map of stars as I should be. My work focused on engines and aerodynamics and material testing and fuel efficiency. It had been a long time since I’d studied the patterns of the stars. 

“You might be more familiar with that than I am,” I admitted. Next to me, Matt was mumbling to himself and pointing his finger from star to star, identifying constellations. 

“We’re on the wrong side of the Earth, I think,” he said, sounding disappointed. “I wanted to see it.”

“Well, maybe in Hawaii,” I said, suddenly coming to the realization that this might very well be the reason we were taking this trip in the first place. 

Chris joined us out in the cabin, grinning as he moved toward us in a swimming sort of motion. “What do you think?” he asked, though he looked a bit perplexed as to why we were looking out the wrong side of windows.

Matt immediately began babbling excitedly. “Absolutely striking! Thank you so much for this, it’s the best day of my life!” Nervous giggling. I rolled my eyes but grinned. 

“We’re above the East coast of the states now,” Chris noted, pointing out the windows that faced Earth. “I’ll never get over how far you can see.” He pointed to the North. “You can see Manicouagan Crater up there in Quebec. See the ring of water?” 

Matt couldn’t get to the other side quickly enough. “Whaaaat?? No way… That’s so cool.”

I watched the crater as it disappeared over the horizon. It’d been quite some time since I’d made the cross ocean flight. I didn’t get to see these things very often. Typically I stuck with the local tour ones when I did come up, I’d never even tried to look for the crater before and I was glad that Chris had pointed it out. 

After a bit of silence as we were all awestruck by the view Chris finally spoke up. “We’re about to start our descent, so go ahead and get back in your seats. I’ll help you with your seatbelt,” Chris said, smiling at Matt who nearly melted, red-faced and enamored as he got back into his seat. 

I chuckled to myself at the way he lost his cool around Chris. To me, Chris was about the most regular guy I’d ever known. A good father of six children and incredibly loyal to his wife of 14 years though they’d been together for about as long as I’d known them way back in uni and they’d already had three kids before they’d decided to tied the knot. He’d struggled with alcoholism for a while that had nearly ended his career. That had been quite the wake up call for him, but now he was healthier and happier than ever and had been sober for nearly a decade now. He was so normal that most people didn’t even realize who he was unless the topic of careers came up. 

“Remember,” Chris reminded us while I finished strapping up my belts. “You’ll be enduring up to six Gs on reentry so remember to focus on your breathing and leg exercises.” He grinned at me and went back to the captain’s chair. 

While I tried to prepare myself for what was undoubtably the worst part of suborbital flight, Matt was busy trying to recover from his latest encounter with his idol. Chris directed the nose of Justine toward Earth and I felt my stomach rise into my chest as the ship began to speed up. I gripped the arms of my chair tightly and pushed my feet firmly against the floor as the building g-forces began to make my skin feel as if I were undergoing a facelift. My body began to feel extremely heavy and I tensed all muscles below my stomach to prevent my blood from pooling at my feet. I glanced over at Matt to make sure he was doing okay and he seemed to be handling the initial reentry Gs just fine. 

It was when Chris pulled the nose of the ship back toward space, though, when things got really challenging. We shifted from lower Gs which were mainly vertical to higher Gs that affected the body laterally. Six times my body weight crushed down on my chest, making breathing extremely difficult. I could feel my vision start to tunnel and I forced myself to breathe in the rhythmically timed coughing manner that we’d been trained for. 

I was so focused on myself that I hadn’t noticed that next to me I was not hearing the same rhythmic breathing until out of the corner of my eye I noticed Matt’s arms suddenly slip from the armrests and dangle behind him limply. It scared me and I nearly forgot to breathe. I looked at him and saw his head hanging at an angle that suggested that he’d surely gone into G-LOC. I found myself more surprised that he’d lost consciousness than if I had lost consciousness. But unlike in training, there was no stopping the G forces when this happened to someone. I continued to focus on my own breathing until the worst of it was over and the ship entered its feather like decent. At least Matt wasn’t the one flying the aircraft.

I reached over the aisle and shook him, repeating his name a few times. He woke slowly, clearly disoriented. 

“Did you get so star struck by Chris you forgot your breathing techniques?” I joked. 

Matt blinked at me in confusion. “What happened?” 

“G-LOC, mate.”

He tipped his head back against the seat. “Oh no. Does that mean I can’t go to space?” he mumbled, closing his eyes and rocking his head back against the headrest. I stared at him, hoping he was simply disoriented and didn’t somehow still have it in his head that I was going to be helping him with his insane idea. I played it off.

“You were just in space, mate.” 

He accepted that answer. “Ah right. Yeah. That happened.” Maybe he’d just been confused and thought for a moment he was still in training. That’s what I hoped. If he still thought he would somehow sell me into building him a spaceship to travel to some distant planet light years away I didn’t know how I was going to deal with that. At what point does one elect the help from professionals on dealing with someone who doesn’t know how or refuses to take No for an answer? I decided not to dwell on it. Surely he was just discombobulated from his brief loss of consciousness.

He was beginning to perk back up as we neared the ground, the vast desert of New Mexico stretching as far as the eye could see. There was something beautiful about the isolated, dry biome of the desert, the only life that seemingly existed was the rare shrub, maybe a cactus or two, but I knew well that the desert could come alive at night. The land was barren, but in the distance, mountains and buttes rose up from the flat soils, striped and red, paintings created by Mother Nature herself. Without vegetation to cover the surface, the beauty of the rocks could be witnessed. We had nothing like this in the UK and I always had a moment of awe at the landscape whenever I took a cross ocean flight. 

As we stepped out of the spaceplane, Chris approached Matt, wanting to check him over to make sure he was okay from his incident during the flight. Matt insisted he was fine, but Chris insisted it was protocol to have a medical examination and Matt obliged easily. Who was he to argue with Chris, his ultimate hero? Medics were always kept on hand at the spaceports for incidents such as these and after a quick check over, they deemed Matt healthy and okay for the flight to LAX where we would catch our flight to our final destination. 

Before he was allowed to get up though, Chris came over and pinned something to Matt’s shirt. Matt looked down at it as Chris backed away. A gold civilian astronaut badge sparkled against the fabric. 

“What’s this?” Matt asked.

“That’s your astronaut badge. You’re officially an astronaut now. Congratulations.” 

I thought I was about to witness Matt lose consciousness once again.


	7. Chapter 7

Typically, a trip from London to Honolulu would take anywhere from sixteen to thirty-six hours. We made it in nine with the precisely timed suborbital trip and a first class flight from LAX. We landed in Honolulu, and since it was quite late and the sun had gone down, I’d presumed this was where we were staying for the evening. However, Matt had another surprise in mind. 

Keck Observatory was located on the big island of Hawaii and he’d hired a private plane to take us over. If it was true he’d booked our stay on the big island, I wondered why we hadn’t simply flown into that airport instead but soon I would learn why he’d chosen this particular route. 

The tin-can of an airplane eased it’s way over the ocean and past four dark land masses of varying size which I presumed were the islands of Molokai, Lanai and Maui. I couldn’t remember the name of the smallest landmass that jutted off of Maui but the pilot made sure to tell us that it was a prominent feature in the Jurassic Park movies. While interesting, in the dark, it was nothing more than a black silhouette and not that impressive. 

As the plane eased around the curve of the giant Mauna Kea, my breath caught as neon orange streaks cut jaggedly through the darkness. I realized that these glowing waterfalls were liquid hot magma spewing from the bowels of Mount Kilauea. Lower, where the lava met the sea, glowing clouds of steam billowed into the air. Mountains, land, all of these were old rocks, millions and billions of years old. But this was the first time I’d ever seen an active volcano. These were new rocks being born today would be the foundation of this island and future islands as the Pacific plate inched it’s way over the hotspot that had created this unique chain of islands. Now I understood. To have such a close up aerial view of such a spectacle at night… why, it was almost as mesmerizing as seeing the Earth from space. Matt had truly thought of every little detail to make this trip as special as possible, it seemed. If he was trying to impress me he was doing a fantastic job. How could I doubt for even another moment that he had plenty of money at his disposal? 

Out of nowhere, Matt whipped out a very professional looking camera and began snapping pictures of the lava below. He asked the pilot to dip closer and was even allowed to stand by a small door the pilot had opened for him so he could photograph without the obstruction of glass. I was way too terrified to go anywhere near an open door on a plane, but evidently this plane was used frequently for skydiving and this was nothing. When Matt was finished and the pilot began procedures for landing I turned to him. 

“What’s with the camera?”

Matt shrugged as he put the camera back into its case. “I’m a nature photographer on the side. You’ve maybe seen some of my stuff in National Geographic.” He grinned.

“What?”

“Yeah… It’s sort of my… my public face.” 

“Your public face?”

“Yeah.”

Evidently that was as much as he planned on saying about that. “Can I see some of your stuff when we get to the hotel?”

“Yeah, of course.” 

Everything was a surprise with him.

When we landed, a chauffeur was waiting for us ready to sweep us away in a limousine to our hotel. Obviously, any kind of car ride made Matt nervous, but I decided to enjoy the experience and helped myself to the complimentary champagne that awaited us in the car. I was in vacation mode. 

We arrived at the Four Seasons in Hualalai, a massive resort reserved for only the most elite. It was a vast sprawling thing that looked more like its own city than a hotel. We had our own private entrance and the check in process was handled by a butler rather than the front desk. We were swiftly escorted to our room, which appeared to be some sort of superior suite. The french doors to the balcony were open and a soft breeze from the ocean ruffled the long curtains. The place was a dream. 

I let out an airy sigh as I stepped into the bedroom and deposited my bags. One bed, I noted, though it was large. Matt had simply dumped his things just inside the entry of the hotel and when I emerged from the bedroom I found him combing his way around the living room, seemingly searching for something. He felt the walls with his hands, picked at the edges of carpeting and eyed the upper corners of the room. I watched him, perplexed. 

“What are you doing…?” 

He replied in a rush as he frantically shook the curtains before turning to the furniture and tossing the cushions left and right. “Bugs, cameras, have to make sure everything is secure…” He moved to the kitchen area and wiggled the refrigerator away from the wall to check behind it. He glanced at me, slightly annoyed. “Well don’t just stand there, help a little?” 

Right. I’d forgotten how paranoid he could be. I was ready to relax and I highly doubted there were cameras spying on guest hotel rooms but Matt was evidently convinced that he was constantly under government surveillance and took no chances his room hadn’t been bugged when They, the government, had learned he had booked a hotel room at the Four Seasons. I half heartedly searched with him and rolled my eyes while he examined every light bulb and every electrical socket and prodded at the wall. 

“At least there’s no wallpaper,” he muttered. “I hate wallpaper. Too easy to embed a chip behind it.” 

“Oh my god,” I muttered under my breath. He probably put tape over his laptop camera too, didn’t he?

Finally, he was satisfied after completely stripping the bed of all it’s sheets, cushions strewn across the floor and all cabinets wide open, contents removed and examined. I ended up helping less with the investigation and more with cleaning up after him as he tore the suite apart. This was not a relaxing way to start a vacation, but he found no devices, as expected. And I was glad. I couldn’t imagine what he’d have done if he’d actually found something. 

“Do you do this every time you travel?” 

“Yeh.”

“Why?” 

Matt pulled out a laptop from his bag along with other gadgets that I didn’t recognize. “Because I have work to do and I don’t want to be watched,” he said while he busily began to set up a network of cables and boxes on the small writing desk in the corner. 

I sat on the corner of the bed and watched. 

“Tell me, have you ever actually found something when you search your hotel rooms like that?”

“Once.”

“Really…?”

“Yeah… I think maybe… it was maybe for pervy reasons for a previous guest but… can’t take any chances.”

“So… What did you do when you found that?”

“I smashed it, of course.” 

Of course. I watched Matt as he worked. The computer booted up and he began typing furiously. It was like getting tunnel vision, the way he worked. He weaved a complex web of VPN connections and connecting remotely to other computers before he even began his work.

“Are you… hacking?”

“No,” his tone was sarcastic and demeaning. Clearly he took insult to the suggestion. “We are staying in a hotel with a wide open public network. There are extra steps that need to be taken in order to stay secure. Any more questions?” He glanced back at me with a glare. 

I raised my hands placatingly. “Alright, alright. Clearly a touchy subject. I’m even less convinced you are not a totally shady person now.”

“Shady and paranoid are not the same.”

“Nor are they mutually exclusive.” 

He looked at me, sadness and vulnerability creeping into his expression. “…Are you having second thoughts?”

I sighed. “Constantly, Matt. I don’t think you need to be so paranoid. That alone creates suspicion, you know?” I paused. It was a conversation we could have over and over and over again but I doubted anything would change. “Why don’t you show me your photos? Tell me more about that.” 

His expression brightened. “Okay. Just let me finish doing this. It’s been almost twenty-four hours since I’ve done anything and I don’t want to raise suspicion with lack of activity. The stock market can be very volatile, especially when you play around with penny stocks. Plus they can be hard to sell after hours.” 

I didn’t generally pay that much attention to the stock markets. I had an investor who did that for me. But the little I did know, working with penny stocks was more or less like gambling and it was extremely risky. Especially if you didn’t know what you were doing.

Evidently he knew what he was doing.

I bored quickly of watching him and stepped outside to enjoy a smoke on the balcony. It was dark and we were far enough away on the outskirts of the city that the stars above were stunning. There were few places in the UK that had dark enough skies to even compare. In the distance, I could hear the crashing of the waves on the shoreline and the sound of some exotic bird calling from the thick rainforest behind the hotel. With the temperatures as comfortable as they were, I could easily stay put right here for the rest of the trip and not complain a bit. But it was really late, and I was hungry. I stepped back inside. 

“I’m gonna order something from room service, do you want anything?” I called to Matt as I moved to the kitchen area to study the menu options. 

“If they’ve got pasta I’ll take that!” he called back. 

This was such a strange business trip. Was it a business trip? Was it a vacation? I wasn’t even sure what kind of trip it was. So far, Matt was working and I was wandering about aimlessly. The menu listed that we could have a masseuse come to our room during certain times of the day. Would it be inappropriate to request such a service? A massage sounded wonderful but I wasn’t too sure of what sort of activities Matt had in mind for this trip. I pondered this as I called in our order and then wandered about the main living space of our suite, studying the fine details of the decor and the architecture. The fabrics were all exquisite and rich and the rugs especially plush. The kitchen was marble and some kind of wood I wasn’t especially familiar with. Maybe it was local. It was beautiful though. 

The butler brought up the meals on a silver platter despite the fact that it was very late and had the dining table set for us, complete with candles (?), wine, a deep bow and “If you need anything I will be right outside.” 

I went to get Matt. I cleared my throat awkwardly. “Did you get us the honeymoon suite or something…?” 

He glanced up from his work, an eyebrow cocked suspiciously. “I don’t know what they gave me. I always just get free upgrades with my black card. Why do you say that?”

I ticked off on my fingers, “The one bed, with…chocolates on the pillows… plus, they lit candles for our ‘dinner.’”

“Seriously?” he cackled. “That’s very fancy, but I’m just gonna eat here. I’m busy.”

“That’s not a very good way to start off a marriage.” 

This joke was apparently very funny to Matt because I’d never heard such a loud laugh come out of that small person. He rocked in his seat before finally getting up to follow me out to the dining area. As soon as he lay eyes on the table he laughed even harder. He had such an infectious laugh, I couldn’t help but start to giggle myself. 

“Did you know that we can get massages?” I pointed outside to the two massage tables laid out on the balcony. “It’s on the menu.”

“Sounds like something you would like. A bit gay.” 

“I come off as gay to you, do I?”

“A bit… you have a weird obsession with fancy cars. And also you dress kind of…” he gestured at me in my white blazer and 

“Like I give a shit about how I look? As opposed to the,” I gestured at him, fumbling for words to describe his attire. “You know you’re not supposed to actually wear a Hawaiian shirt when you go to Hawaii?”

He looked down at his loud, flowered shirt which was easily two sizes too large on him. He shrugged his boney shoulders. “What’s wrong with that?Where else am I going to wear it?”

“Nowhere. You should wear it nowhere. Except maybe to a costume party where you are ironically dressed like a tacky tourist dad going to Hawaii.” 

It was the first time that Matt and I had ever really pissed around. To be honest, it was the first time that Matt had seemed human to me. He operated like a maximum efficiency machine fueled by sugar. A clumsy machine, but I’d rarely seen him eat, I’d never seen him sleep and his brain never seemed to turn off. Humor was strange on him. Strange, but nice. 

He picked up his plate and went back into the room to continue working and I ate at the table alone, enjoying the wine. After, I got ready for bed. Matt was still working away at his laptop.

“I thought that was gonna be quick…” I muttered as I crawled into bed, giving up on getting to see his photos as it was just too late and I was dead tired from all the traveling we’d done. 

“It was supposed to be… but I’m having trouble with one of my servers… and I’m trying to figure out what’s going on with it but I can’t get a signal at all.” 

“All right well… is it okay if I turn the light off? I need to sleep.”

He grunted a vague approval as he leaned closer to his laptop screen, clearly very invested in whatever it was he was doing, his plate only half eaten. I flipped the switch and fell asleep to the sounds of his keyboard. I found it oddly soothing.


	8. Chapter 8

There were some things in this world money couldn’t buy. A spaceship to an exoplanet of a star thirty-nine light years away, for example, or observatory time at the W. M. Keck Observatory. One needed to be a member of certain research communities, such as a student at the University of Hawaii, or Los Angeles. Or NASA. And if one managed to be a part of one of the few communities allowed time at the Keck Observatory, one had to be awarded observatory time based on their project’s scientific merit. Money was never a factor in awarding candidates observatory time and because of this, I couldn’t understand how Matt had managed to get us in there in the first place. He assured me, though, that everything was legitimate, despite the fact that he met none of the required qualifications.

Mauna Kea is home to twelve independent observatories located on a specific area of the summit called The Astronomy Precinct. The area is one of the best places for stargazing in the world due to consistently dark and clear skies. The atmosphere is dry and stable since the peak of the summit sits above the cloud line, and the skies remain dark because the observatories sit at an altitude high above any light pollution from the surrounding cities. And since Hawaii is near the equator, it’s an ideal location for astronomers to view the skies of both the Northern Hemisphere and parts of the Southern Hemisphere. As some would call it, the Mecca of Astronomy.

Keck was special because the observatory contained two telescopes, one of which used the first ever state-of-the-art laser guided adaptive optics to obtain crisper and clearer images than even the Hubble telescope could ever produce. Impressive for a land based telescope. One challenge that all land based telescopes have always faced is that of atmospheric turbulence which can distort and blur images of distant objects. However, Keck had developed a nearly foolproof way of correcting this so that the telescope could see clearly in any part of the sky by using the laser to excite sodium atoms at the edge of the atmosphere which ultimately creates an artificial star to measure atmospheric distortions. Then a flexible and constantly moving mirror within the telescope changes shape to correct for this distortion. All this results in impressively clear and detailed images. And while NASA’s Kepler telescope had initially discovered Trappist-1’s seven exoplanets, Keck’s continuously improving vortex chronograph had furthered the studies by being able to take actual images of those exoplanets. A first in imaging of rocky Earth sized planets within the habitable zone. Before that, vortex chronographs had only ever been able to detect gaseous giants like Jupiter.

Waimea, a relatively short forty-five minute drive from our hotel, was home to Keck’s remote operations headquarters. This was where all observation was done by scientific teams. Due to the telescopes’ high altitude and dangerous terrain, Keck had long ago decided that research scientists were no longer allowed to do research on site at the actual telescopes. However, with advanced telecommunications, scientists were able to communicate with the one or two technicians who operated the telescopes on the summit.

Upon arrival, we were greeted by a native Hawaiian woman about my age. Her name was Loni and she informed us that she was a liaison between the University of Hawaii and the Keck Observatory. She greeted me first with a solid handshake, clearly assuming I was the one in charge of this entire ordeal. “You must be Matthew.”

“Actually,” I hesitated, “I’m Dominic. This is Matthew.” I gestured toward him but he’d gotten distracted by an educational display in the entrance of the headquarters.

“Oh.” There was an element of surprise and a hint of disappointment in Loni’s voice. She looked me up and down. “Are you joining us?”

“I am,” I replied flirtatiously, eyeing her up and down as well. I couldn’t help it. I had a weakness for brunettes.

She smiled. “You’d better get changed then.”

My eyebrows went up in shock at her forwardness. “Oh, my… I..”

“You can’t go up on the mountain in shorts and a tee shirt,” she clarified, chuckling a bit.

I whipped my head round at Matt. “Wait, we’re going up on the mountain? Why didn’t you tell me! I didn’t bring any appropriate clothing for that!” I studied his outfit: long loose trousers and a thick baggy jumper, his bike helmet hanging off the back of his neck from the car ride up. Standard Matt wear that I hadn’t thought twice about. I, on the other hand, was dressed for tropical Hawaiian weather. Sandals and all.

He looked at me. “I assumed you knew the Keck observatory was on top of the summit.”

I glanced at Loni, feeling my ego deflating fast. It was embarrassing to be caught unprepared, especially in front of a pretty woman. “I thought scientists observed from here though.”

It was clear that Loni felt sorry for me. “They do. No one is allowed to observe from the Summit. But we have arranged a daytime tour of the telescopes ahead of your observation, which has been approved.”

I glared at Matthew. When had he ever been predictable? What else did he have planned? Swimming with sharks? Walking through hot lava? One could never know with Matthew!! Of course, there was just no way I was going to miss a chance to actually see the Keck telescopes up close and personal. But, gee, a little warning sure would have been nice. I guess I was just going to have to freeze my fucking nuts off because he couldn’t have had the bloody courtesy to mention that we would actually be going on top of one of the largest goddamn mountains in the whole fucking world.

While I slowly burned holes through Matthew’s skull with my eyes, Loni stepped in. “Let me see if any of the remote ops guys has anything extra you could borrow.” She sized me up, nodded and disappeared down a hallway.

As soon as she stepped away I growled threateningly at Matthew. Be an annoying prick in our private meetings, fine. But this was unacceptable. I could barely get my words out. “Next time,” I hissed, “you give me some warning if you’re not planning on giving me a solid itinerary for some mystery trip you’re springing on me. I can’t read your goddamn mind, prick.”

I stepped outside and immediately lit up a cigarette. I needed to clear my head.

Loni had returned back to the lobby and was chatting with Matthew by the time I stepped back inside. She held a pair of Carhartts and a thick jacket along with some wool socks and a pair of boots that were definitely 4 sizes too big for me. I approached them and Matthew was waving his hands wildly, exclaiming in excitement about the things he hoped to see tomorrow while observing. This I only knew now based on what Loni had said, not what Matthew had told me.

Loni smiled at me reassuringly and handed me the clothing. “It’s probably too big for you but I hope it will work.”

I gave her another charming smile. “Anything is better than nothing. Thanks, you’re a lifesaver.”

I dressed while she continued her conversation with Matt. I glanced over a few times to read her reaction to the crazy little man who was talking about… actually very scientific stuff. And crazier, she seemed to be following along with him with ease. I noticed that she had given him a heavier coat to wear over his jumper too though, and that made me feel mildly better.

When we were both ready, Loni lead us out to her Subaru and Matt pulled out his bike helmet again and clambered into the back seat, moving some of her equipment out of the way just so he could have his middle seat. Loni gave me a side glance, obviously finding this behavior strange. I shrugged and climbed into the front seat next to her so she wouldn’t feel like a cab driver.

Driving up Mauna Kea was no easy feat. Tourists could do so, but were required to supply their own four wheel drive vehicle. Climbing from near sea level to over four thousand meters above sea level required at least a half hour rest at the visitor center to avoid altitude sickness. Beyond the visitor center, the roads that lead to the precinct were unpaved gravel where very few tourists dared venture.

As we travelled the steep, slow climb up the mountain, Loni explained to me how the peak of summit was considered to be sacred land to Native Hawaiians. She explained to me how ancient Hawaiian laws had set restrictions to visitors of the peak to only the highest ranking of Ali’i, or hereditary noble rulers. An ancient royalty caste system of sorts. Mauna Kea’s summit was considered the Region of the Gods.

“It is conflicting, as a Native Hawaiian,” she confessed. “To work with the telescopes that sit atop sacred land. There are some in the community who shun me. They call me a traitor to my heritage, that I am working with the enemy. I have always loved astronomy and have always had a great respect for the stars. It seemed only natural to study it. You know my name means “sky” in Hawaiian?” she chuckled, glancing at me. “It has always seemed like destiny. I also understand where they come from, though. How can I not? But if the Gods are at work atop the mountain, surely it can be no coincidence that great discoveries be made up there and that my namesake pulls me there as well. I think that there can be a great deal of spirituality in Astronomy and science, don’t you think?” She turned to look at me. I’d never really known about the effect the Astronomy Precinct had had on the natives. I’d only known about the area’s scientific significance. As with all things, it always seemed that white people came in and took what they felt belonged to them, regardless of whom was there first. I felt bad this was the first I was hearing of it.

“Yeah. I do. I think looking at the stars is an incredibly spiritual experience.” I wasn’t sure I believed in Gods or religion, but I believed in something. It was almost impossible to look at the stars and not feel so small and so alone at the idea that as far as we knew it, we were the only life in all of these billions of stars to the furthest reaches of the universe.

I was enamored with her. She was smart and passionate. She was exposing me to local culture in a way I couldn't have gotten as a tourist. She knew what she was doing when it came to navigating a tough driving terrain, and mastered it with very little thought. She knew when to stop the car and rest so we could allow our bodies to adjust to the quickly changing altitude. She showed concern for Matt each time he screeched and whimpered from the back seat, this drive clearly pushing him far out of his comfort zone. And she was pretty to boot.

Loni glanced over her shoulder at Matt, trying to include him in the conversation, and I looked back at him too. I could easily see the whites of his eyes as he looked terrified out the windows at the steep terrain. His chest heaved with anxiety and Loni glanced at me again. “Are you alright? Do you need me to pull over? Are you feeling ill?”

Matt just shook his head jerkily from side to side, as always preferring to be left alone in his panic attack.

“I think it’s just the car ride,” I explained to her and lowered my voice though I was sure that Matt’s constantly heightened senses could still hear me, even over the rumble of the engine in its low gear. “I think he has a phobia or something. It’s best to just let him, uh… ride it out.”

“Ahh,” she nodded. “Do you find astronomy spiritual, Matt?” She asked anyway.

He choked out a “Yes,” but that was as far as his reply went. Impressive, for Matt to attempt any kind of conversation during a car ride this intense.

The rest of the drive up to the visitor’s center, I told her about myself, about the work I did for the English spaceport. Loni seemed quite as impressed with me as I was with her, which was pleasing. We took an hour long rest at the visitor’s center and grabbed a bite to eat while we were there since it was nearing lunch time anyway. The area was fairly packed with tourists, as this was generally considered the last stop up the mountain for most, except for those who dared to venture hiking the rest of the way. It was summertime in the tropics down below, but above us, the mountain had a coating of snow on its peak. Loni explained that snow on the peak this time of the year was unusual but not unheard of. Climate change had been to blame for the more frequent occurrences.

The rest had given Matt a chance to calm down a bit, and he needed it because the last bit of the journey I think nearly gave him a heart attack. Loni was concerned he was going to give himself altitude sickness if he didn’t slow his breathing down and work on slowing his heart rate. She spoke calmly to him the rest of the drive, and warned if he couldn’t calm himself down we would have to turn around and go back. That seemed to convince him and through some sheer force of will, he forced himself to be calm. When we pulled up outside of Keck, Matt tried to race out of the vehicle but Loni stopped him again.

“You have to slow down up here. The altitude is no joke and I don’t think any of us want to have to take you to the hospital because you’ve given yourself a heart attack or you’re vomiting uncontrollably. Please let me know if you are feeling lightheaded or nauseous at all. I’m serious.” Matt obeyed her without question. Would be nice if he treated me with the same kind of respect.

It was cold up here and felt even colder with the strong winds. The temperatures hovered somewhere around freezing. At least it felt that way. I didn’t have much of a reference point, it was so rare I experienced such cold beyond sticking my face into a freezer. Even in Britain, the temperatures were so mild that while gloomy and rainy almost all of the time, ice and snow were still quite rare.

I couldn’t help but admire the view from up so high. I’d never been to the top of a mountain before, and now here I was on top of the biggest mountain in the world. Of course, Everest had the highest elevation, there was no arguing that. But to measure Mauna Kea from its base below sea level to it’s peak, Everest was completely dwarfed in comparison.

“Wait till you see the sunset later,” Loni said, stepping up next to me to admire the view as well. “If you want to wait around up here to see that we can. It’s worth it. We can even do some stargazing back at the visitor center. Not allowed to do so up here unless we spend the night, which I don’t want to do and I don’t think you do either. Car headlights disturb the research being done at the telescopes and we want to avoid that.”

“Yes!” Matt exclaimed. “I want to look for Trappist-1!”

Loni lead the way, warning us not to step on any cinders. She pulled out her keys and let us into the building. The warmth was a relief, but Loni told us not to get too used to it because the telescopes themselves were kept cooled at below freezing temperatures to protect the steel. If they were to be warmed too much, they could warp, which would be devastating to the sensitive calibrations of the machine’s relation with gravity.

She led us through the dark operations rooms. The scientists who would run the telescopes tonight would not arrive until just before sundown. She explained that they took week long shifts, then had a week off. During the week they worked at the telescopes, then stayed at base camp by the visitor center where they could remain acclimated. It could take up to four days to become fully acclimated, so that was why they worked for a week at a time. Many of the scientists even practiced sleeping in altitude tents on their time off to make acclimation easier. For us, since we weren’t acclimated in that way, forgetfulness and incontinence would be a struggle even for a short 45 minute tour.

Loni lead us up into the dome of the first telescope. Climbing through narrow ladder ways into the dome was claustrophobic but once inside, the dome felt huge. Before us was the massive mirror I’d read about. Loni explained that each of the thirty six hexagonal mirrors were able to move independently of one another, and they flexed and vibrated, sometimes completely invisibly to the naked eye.

“That up there is the laser,” she pointed out. The dome itself wasn’t open, since it was the middle of the day, but I would have loved to see that laser in action. I had to settle with some pictures Loni showed me on her phone.

Matt wandered around the dome, clearly struggling with Loni’s strict instructions to not touch anything. But he’d brought his camera and settled for taking pictures of everything. The mirrors especially, seemed to fascinate him. Once we’d finished touring the first telescope, Loni lead us across the roof of the operations center to the second scope. Loni explained that the two telescopes had different functions, including multiple types of high resolution and low resolution spectrographs and near-infrared viewing. Plus, of course, the instrument Matt was most interested in, the vortex chronograph.

We wrapped up the tour and went back outside. Matt wanted to climb the summit so he could get some nice pictures of the entire astronomy precinct, but Loni pointed to a sign nearby. Matt walked over and read the sign and came back looking disappointed.

“What’s it say?” I asked.

“The actual summit is sacred, visitors are not allowed to hike up it,” Loni explained.

“You can still get some good photos from over here though,” I reassured Matt. He took off a ways and started taking pictures while Loni and I headed to the car to wait in a warmer environment for sundown. She pulled out an oximeter to test our heart rate and blood oxygen levels. “Checking for signs of hypoxia,” she explained. Our levels were okay but she worried about Matt since he was doing so much walking around taking pictures. Finally he came back to the car and she fussed about his measurements, lecturing him that he needed to sit and rest now because his heart rate was way too high.

We rested and chatted in the car until other 4x4’s started to emerge over the edge of the summit, the telescope operators were beginning to arrive for their shifts as the sun was beginning to set. We took that as a sign and got out of the car to find a place to sit and watch the sunset.

It truly was as magnificent and beautiful as Loni had promised. I found myself sitting close to her, putting my arm around her for warmth as we enjoyed the fiery colors in the sky. The sun dipped below the cloud line which provided a false horizon that allowed us to enjoy almost two sunsets, rather than one. It was a unique experience indeed. Matt snapped away at the constantly shifting colors while Loni and I simply enjoyed the show.

As soon as the sun dipped below the actual horizon Loni stood. It was time to go now before it was too dark to drive back down. We turned back to the car just as one of the other telescopes, not Keck, shot a laser into the sky, its own adaptive optics at work. Matt and I both gasped in awe and Matt began immediately snapping more pictures.

“Oh, what luck!” Loni exclaimed. “I’m so glad you get to see that! I believe that’s the Gemini scope!”

“This has been the absolutely most amazing experience,” I told her. “Thank you so much for bringing us up here. It’s been perfect.” We admired the laser for a few more minutes before Loni pushed us to continue. It was starting to get too dark and our window for leaving was closing. We hurried to the car and started the descent back down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note: You've probably realized by now that this story is set some time in the ambiguous future. Because of this I've taken some artistic liberty to make up some scientific advances that I'm not sure are realistic or not. The big one in this chapter is the advancement of the vortex chronograph. I'm unsure if this tool would ever be able to detect anything other than gaseous giants, since the way scientists discovered Trappist-1's exoplanets was through a different technique measuring the brightness of the star and how it changes when a planet passes in front of it. (It actually gets brighter, if you would believe, but I won't go into the science of the thing as it's quite complex). I just wanted to let everyone know that while I do try hard to keep things as realistic as possible, I am taking some liberty with the fact that this story is set in the future and isn't exactly the same as it is now. 
> 
> Author's Note 2: There's not really a space for this in AO3, but if you've been following this story on Museslash at Dreamwidth, there is a spot where you can post what song you are listening to. If you're so inclined to check that out, this is where I have been putting songs for the soundtrack I've created for this story. You can check out the museslash community here https://museslash.dreamwidth.org/


	9. Chapter 9

Driving down the mountain was infinitely worse than the drive up had been. With the nose of the vehicle angled forward, we could see directly down the steepness of the mountain, the edges of the road seeming so narrow that we appeared ready to tumble over the edge at the slightest mistake. With darkness approaching shadows grew impossibly long, and the mountain appeared even steeper the further down we peered. Even I was struggling with anxiety and Matt was ready to abandon the vehicle at any moment and walk the rest of the way down.

“You’re not doing that, mate,” I chided. “It would take  _ ages _ for you to get back to the hotel and it’s not any safer. You could get hit by another car — someone who knows far less how to drive these roads than Loni does.”

“What if the brakes fail- “

“The brakes won’t fail,” Loni reassured him. “This is why we drive a 4x4 on the mountain. It allows us to use the low gear, so we don’t burn out the brakes. See? I’m not using the brakes at all and we’re moving at a manageable speed. It will be okay. Besides, we’ll be at the Visitor Information Center soon.”

She was right. The drive down seemed much shorter than the drive up had been. We found a parking space at the VIS and Loni pulled out the cooler we had used for lunch earlier in the day while I found us a picnic table in the dark.

The stars gave us a phenomenal view while we ate the rest of our sandwiches. I couldn’t believe how clearly we could see the Milky Way. It was no lie that Mauna Kea had some of the best stargazing in the world. As an astro engineer I was no stranger to trips to find dark skies. I had done many, mostly in my undergraduate years. But this far surpassed any I had experienced previously.

Matt seemed to be on a mission as he gazed at the sky. Finally, he turned to Loni, sounding a bit worried. “Can you show me where Trappist-1 is? I’m having a hard time finding Aquarius.”

Loni smiled at Matt. “Oh, you won’t find Aquarius this time of night. It’s not over the horizon yet. Won’t be until around two in the morning. It’s more of a winter constellation here, but it still pokes up in late August. Even if it was up, you wouldn’t be able to see it, even with these telescopes. It’s a red dwarf which means it’s dim and also very far away. Don’t worry, we’ll still be able to see it tomorrow with the big scopes and observing conditions should be great! Supposed to be a new moon. There’s some other cool stuff I can show you with these little scopes up on the viewing deck if you want to see.”

Matt seemed relieved but seemed to immediately lose interest in stargazing when he found out he wouldn’t be able to see Trappist-1. He shrugged. “I’d rather get back to the hotel, I think. I’ve got some work to do.”

“If you don’t mind, Matt, I’d like to look through the scopes,” I interjected. I know it was his trip, but I was at the top of Mauna Kea for the first time in my life and I wasn’t about to walk away from some the most amazing stargazing available in the world. I couldn’t believe how disinterested Matt seemed to be about it. He already had his nose down in his cell phone more than he was looking at the sky.

Loni and I shared a Look and wandered off to the deck to do some stargazing.

“That’s so weird,” I mumbled once we were out of earshot from him. “How could he  _ not _ want to enjoy this?”

“He is a bit odd,” Loni agreed. “How did you two meet?”

I laughed. “That’s quite the long story that I’d be glad to tell you over drinks later, if you’d like.”  _ Smooth _ ,  _ Howard _ .  _ Well done, you haven’t completely lost your touch. _ I gave her one of my trademark sparkling smiles to lock her in.

Loni smiled at me in the dark. “I’d love that.”  _ Nice. _

Together we enjoyed observing the Pleiades, the Bubble nebula, Andromeda Galaxy and others. Nearly forty-five minutes passed before we decided we’d better not keep Matt waiting too long.

“He  _ is _ the boss on this trip,” I admitted to her, rubbing my fingers together to indicate he was the one paying for everything.

“Oh, I know,” Loni said. “He donated a million dollars in grant money to the University of Hawaii in exchange for one night with our Trappist-1 research group. Seems it’s the only star he’s interested in.”

I tutted. So that’s how he’d done it. He’d managed to buy his way in after all. Sneaky, but impressive.

“We do appreciate his donation, though. Very much. We’ve got lots of ideas for how to use it and a lot of students will benefit from the money,” Loni continued.

“I’ll pass that on,” I said.

When we got back, Matt was pacing by the vehicle, clearly eager to leave. Judging by his mood, I was surprised he hadn’t made good on his promise to walk down the rest of the mountain, but I was glad he had chosen not to. He was silent the rest of the way to Waimea, though I couldn’t tell if he was mad at us, or simply anxious about the car ride. I turned to him once we got back to Keck Headquarters to let him know that Loni and I were going to go out for drinks, and I’d be back at the hotel later.

He snorted a little as he headed for the limo that was waiting for him. “Ooright, Prince Charming. See you later.”

~*~*~*~

I lied. I did  _ not _ go back to the hotel later. In fact, I didn’t see Matt again until we met up at Keck headquarters for our rendezvous with the research group. Instead, I’d woken up next to Loni in her bed. So, things hadn’t gone exactly as planned, but it was okay because she and I had really hit it off. And, the sex had been good.  _ Really _ good. Things had gone  _ better _ than planned. I certainly had no regrets. Especially after the amazing strawberry and coconut pancakes she’d made in the morning.

Matt was pacing outside when Loni and I arrived at Keck Headquarters later that night. I, unashamedly in yesterday’s clothes. Matt raised an eyebrow at me, though I couldn’t otherwise read his expression. He didn’t seem particularly upset at me, or particularly happy either. He did seem nervous, however.

“Why aren’t you inside?” I asked him. It was clear the rest of the research group was here, judging by the university vans parked outside. I looked toward the dark building. Hmm.

“I got a little too excited…” his tone said more than his words did, and I immediately understood that he was accidentally responsible for the power outage. “So I came outside for some air,” he added at the end, probably for Loni’s sake.

Loni was instantly concerned. “Shit! I’ve got to get this fixed. This could interfere with our research tonight.” She ran inside.

Matt breathed while he leaned on a fence post, trying to calm himself. The lights flickered on for a moment.

“I’m never going to get used to that. You being able to do that,” I said, leaning next to him.

Matt’s tone was sarcastic when he replied. “You say that like it’s some magic power I have.”

“Well it kind of is…innit? It’s a strange phenomenon. We should study it,” I wiggled my eyebrows at him and he scoffed, folding his arms.

“I can’t  _ make _ it happen, cunt. And I’m not going to be a science experiment for you.”

I joked, “Aw, even if it means I’ll agree to build you a spaceship in exchange?”

This perked him up, his eyes brightened. “Really?”

I deadpanned. “No. That’s never happening.”

Matt pouted at me. “Why would you joke about that? That’s not funny… arse.” We headed inside as the lights inside flickered back on and finally stayed on. “So how was the sex?” Matt asked, staring straight ahead as he opened the door for me.

“Better than yours was, I expect.”

“Watch yourself. Don’t forget who’s paid for this trip. I could leave you here.”

“That’s absolutely the  _ worst _ possible thing I can think of. Ever.”

~*~*~*~

The first half of the evening was clearly very boring for Matt. We tried to stay out of the way as much as possible and allow the students and researchers do their work, but Matt couldn’t sit still for longer than a few minutes before he was pacing again. He knew he had to wait until much later for the research to focus on Trappist-1. I tried to learn as much as I could about the work they were working on and it was all very fascinating, but by the time Aquarius rose over the horizon, Matt had worked his hair into mad scientist levels of frenzy with all his restlessness. He was all ears and rapt attention, however, once things got started. As hands on as the students were at some points.

“So, what exactly is it they’re studying?” I asked Loni.

“We’re working with Caltech looking for biosignatures on the exoplanets using high-dispersion coronagraphy. We use the coronagraph to block any of the starlight from Trappist-1 so we can actually image the planets. Once we’re able to get images of the planets, we can use high-res spectrometers to look for oxygen fingerprints or methane fingerprints. Maybe even water. We’ve got one group working on that while other groups are working on identifying weather patterns and rotational rate. We’re even hoping the instruments are sensitive enough to detect continents. That’s a long shot, especially for a land-based telescope, but you never know what you might find! Unfortunately, we’re a long way off from being able to determine much of anything at this time. Right now, we’re just collecting as much data as we can.”

Matt let out a scream and the lights flickered in the room again. Everyone jumped and looked at him. He excitedly pointed at one of the computer screens and looked at me with wide eyes.

“What…?” I asked.

“You can see the planets!!”

I came over to look at the screen. Sure enough, a few blurry dots floated around on the computer screen. They weren’t much to look at in this way, but the reality that we were looking at actual planetary bodies nearly forty light years away was pretty astounding. “Ahh, there they are, aren’t they? That’s bloody amazing.”

Matt was snapping pictures of the computer screen with his camera.

“Matt, if you’d like we can print you some posters to take with you. And the spectrometry data from today as well, if you want?” Loni offered. Just a little souvenir. Of course, he agreed immediately, even jumping up and down with a little squeal of excitement.

I’d expected the students to find him annoying and in the way, but they seemed more amused by him than irritated. I realized then that he was their age and excited about the same subject that they were excited about. And it  _ was _ exciting; even  _ I  _ was excited. On the data collecting end of things, sometimes even the coolest research projects could be extraordinarily tedious and it could be easy to lose sight of the big picture. But it seemed these students appreciated the opportunity presented to them, being able to work with the world-famous Keck telescopes and research the Trappist-1 star system.

“Did you know the system was discovered- well, the star and three planets at the time- using a telescope in Chile called the Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope or TRAPPIST, hence the name of the star system? It’s a telescope not much different than Keck, actually. Which is pretty incredible. We’re only able to do this kind of research here because of that coronagraph Matt was so excited about. Maybe someday when or if the thirty-meter telescope gets built, we’ll have even better tools. But the Hawaiian and the scientist in me thinks we really don’t need that big telescope. Because we’re able to use two telescopes to trick light into acting as if it’s going into one big telescope. And the further apart we set our telescopes, we’re discovering the more complex and clear and deep our images can be.”

“Really? How’s that work?” I may have studied astrophysics in undergrad, but in terms of Loni’s and my education, that was about all we had in common. I’d moved on to astroengineering and she had continued in academia and research, so this was all new information to me.

“It’s… really complicated and I’m not sure I can explain it quite right… it’s a bit of a rabbit hole to be completely honest. The process kind of relies on the fact that there are alternate realities in which a light particle in one reality is passing through one telescope while in an alternate reality the same particle is passing through the other telescope at exactly the same time. It’s hard to wrap your head around, but for whatever reason, it actually works. It’s tricky and the instruments are so sensitive and must be precisely calibrated to work, but it can be done and so maybe…maybe we don’t need to build that big telescope in the first place. Maybe we can use existing technology to get clearer images. I think it’s a viable alternative that can be a compromise to both parties.”

She was so socially conscious. It made me even more attracted to her. It really was too bad that after this trip was all said and done, I’d go back to doing what I do in the UK and she would keep doing what she did here and nothing more would come of it. But it was nice to enjoy her company while I could.

As the sun began to rise and the telescopes had to close up shop, students began to gather their things to head home and catch some sleep before continuing research the following night. Between jet lag and staying up most of the night before with Loni, I was absolutely knackered. And from what I understood, we would be flying out sometime in the early evening. I was ready to catch some sleep before we had to take off. While Matt gathered his posters and other things, I stepped outside with Loni to say our final goodbyes. I gave her my card and email address so she could write if she wanted, but in the end, we both accepted this was just a little fling, no more no less, but if I was back in the area or if she was over in the UK at any time, let’s please get together again. I gave her one last kiss and we parted ways just as Matt came stumbling out of the building, his arms full of rolled up posters.

The sun was already well above the horizon by the time we got back to the hotel and I headed straight for the bedroom once we returned. Unfortunately, Matt followed me, immediately sitting at his computer and typing away. I was so tired though, I wasn’t about to give up the plush bed simply to escape his presence, even if he did keep the lights on and there was a constant sound of soft clicking as his fingers moved across the keyboard.

I was toeing the edge of unconsciousness, at that half lucid state that confuses dream with reality, when a thunderous sound woke me. Matt was unrolling his posters from the observatory and trying to sprawl them across the floor. Given their size, the weight of the paper and their tendency to want to roll up on him again, he was making far more noise than should be strictly necessary. Especially when I was trying to sleep. Had he no common courtesy? _ Oh my god _ .

“Matt,” I grumbled, pulling a pillow over my head. “Go to _ sleep _ .”

He didn’t reply but there was more rustling as he gathered up the posters and moved them out of the room with him where I’m sure he continued to work. Thankfully, he was kind enough to remember to turn off the lights. As silence draped over me like a welcome and warm blanket, I slipped into a welcome coma.

  
  



	10. Chapter 10

Between jet lag and operating on the schedule of a telescope, nothing was more disorienting than waking up in a hotel room plunged in total darkness from blackout curtains. I knew it had to be daytime but I also knew we were supposed to be flying out in the afternoon and I worried I’d slept too late. I moved to reach for my phone but there was a warm weight pressed against my side.

“Loni?” I mumbled, still dazed with sleep. Though it was dark, my eyes were able to adjust enough to make out the tuft of spiky black hair sticking out from under the covers. Matt. So he _did_ sleep sometimes. I’d seriously been beginning to wonder if he was even human. I tried to shift again, only to find that he had attached himself to me like static cling. Somehow, my arm had managed to get under him and in the night I must have thought he was Loni, because my other arm was draped over him too. He was so _small_. I gently moved the covers back from his head and found he had his face pressed right up against my chest. Again, I tried to untangle myself from this awkward position but when I tried to get up he let out a sleepy whine and his arm stretched across my waist, pulling me closer. For a moment, I wondered if he was waking but his breathing quickly went back to soft and steady snores.

 Right. So this was awkward.

 I cleared my throat and prodded his shoulder. “Matt.” He stirred but his eyes remained closed. “Matt,” I tried again, a little louder and a more deliberate adjustment of my arm under his head. That woke him. It took a moment, but once he realized the position he gasped loudly and sprung to the other side of the bed. We were both plenty awake now and he was apologizing profusely.

 “Oh God, I’m sorry— Shit-shit, sorry, sorry, I don’t know how I got over there— sorry—” he rattled.

 I didn’t think that he embarrassed easily, as I’d yet to see him humiliated, but he had curled up in a tiny ball and was pulling the covers over his head, trying to hide from me. I felt bad for him and tried to comfort him. “It’s alright, mate, it happens.”

 He stayed under the covers.

 I reached for my phone to check the time and nearly leapt out of bed. “Blimey, it’s ten after one! We’ve overslept! Our plane leaves at two thirty!” I nearly tripped over my feet as I started throwing things into my suitcase.

 Matt poked his head out from under the covers. “Oh, I changed our flight…I forgot to tell you.”

 I paused in my frantic packing. “You did? Why?”

 “We need to stop in Brazil before we go home.”

  _Brazil?_ I dropped my clothes to the floor. “Why do we need to go to _Brazil?”_

 “My server over there’s gone down. I’ve tried everything I can think of to fix it remotely but I think it needs physical attention this time.” He dropped the blanket from in front of his face as he fully sat up and turned on the lamp at his bedside.

 “ _Why_ do you have a _server_ in _Brazil?”_

 He slid out of bed, still fully dressed in his clothes from the night before. He yawned and stretched. “I’ve got them all over the world,” he said nonchalantly as he scratched his arse, then disappeared into the bathroom.

 “What do you _mean_ you’ve got them all over the _world?”_ I called through the door. The toilet flushed and I could hear the tap running.

 He opened the door and looked at me, his mouth full of toothpaste as he brushed his teeth. “I tol oo. I aah eye owe EePeeEn—“

  _No_ idea what he was saying. “Is that my toothbrush?” I interrupted.

 Matt spit into the sink and rinsed my toothbrush, leaving it on sink. I looked at it in disgust. Now I would have to go get one from the front desk.

 “Have you been using my toothbrush this entire time?”

 He shrugged. Great answer.

 “Okay… But why do _I_ have to go to Brazil with you? I’ve got work that needs doing back home, you know. I’ve got no business in Brazil.”

 He slipped past me. “I already switched the tickets. Deal with it.”

 Deal with it. _Deal with it._

 I followed him around as he got dressed. “It would have been nice if you’d _asked_ me before doing that.”

 “Sorry,” he shrugged and tugged on that awful Hawaiian shirt again.

 “When do we fly out then?”

 “Tomorrow,” he said as he sat down at his computer and began doing whatever it was that he did on his computers. He was so exhausting. Always busy.

 I touched his shoulder. “Mate.”

 “Yeah?”

 “Do you ever just… sit and do nothing?”

 “You mean like sleeping?”

 “No, I mean like doing nothing for the sake of doing nothing. Taking a break. Not working. Doing something for leisure.”

 He looked at me, “I’m not working… this is just my everyday routine. Buying and selling stocks… it’ll take a bit longer since I’ve got to reroute my VPN to get around my dead server. Just general maintenance.”

 “How long does that usually take?”

 “A couple hours, since we’re at a hotel and not my house.”

 I put both my hands on his shoulders. “And then what, after that?”

 “I’ll grab a bite and dig into this stuff we looked at yesterday. They gave me a bunch of academic papers to read up on so I’ll have to look into those.”

 “And then?”

 “Then I’m working on a manual and some more design…”

 I squeezed his shoulders, hard. “So basically what you’re telling me is that you have _no clue_ how to relax. From the sounds of it, nothing you’ve listed here _needs_ to be done absolutely today. Are you going to lose millions in the stock market if you just let it rest for one day?”

 “I could…”

 “Is that not pennies to you though? Let’s be real.” Under any other circumstances, I would not have encouraged someone lose millions in the stock market but… nothing about Matt was conventional and he was not an ordinary circumstance even on his most normal of days.

 “I guess…”

 “Okay. I am officially staging an intervention on your productivity. You need to take a _break._ I don’t know if you’ve realized it but we are in _Hawaii_ which is a _tropical island_ known for _vacations_ and it’s _beaches._ And we are staying at the most luxurious resort on the entire island. We are going to the _beach._ No arguing with me. Grab your swim trunks. Come on. No work allowed.”

 He looked as though he’d been scolded. “Uh… alright…”

 I gave him my sternest look, which admittedly, I’d been told wasn’t very stern. It was hard to be any kind of intimidating when your eyebrows had all but bleached out and thinned away over the years. “Alright?” He was already fidgeting and looking at his phone. I took it out of his hands. “No technology.”

 Matt looked extremely uncomfortable. “I didn’t even pack a swimsuit,” he whined.

 “Well it’s a good thing I brought two pair,” I said, tossing him my extra pair of swim trunks. We were roughly the same size, height-wise though he was about as skinny and malnourished as they came. And pale. He was _so_ pale. I tossed a bottle of sun cream at him too. “You’ll want this. Lots of it.”

 

~*~*~

 

Matthew Bellamy was bad at the beach. While I easily could lay on a deck chair for hours in the sun, he couldn’t sit still for longer than five minutes. I sipped on my Piña Colada while he slurped his down like a slushy and immediately ordered another just because it was something to do. He even slathered himself with sun cream far more often than he needed to because he was “so bored.”

 “That’s the idea, you know. Just lay here, enjoy the warmth and the sun, listen to the sounds of the waves crashing on the beach. Slow down. Clear your mind. It’s so lovely. Or go play in the water if you’re that bored. They’ve got snorkel sets to rent over there. I’ll go out with you if you wanna do that.”

 He wrinkled his nose at the idea.

 I sat up a bit and squinted at him. “Look, I know it’s not space… but there are cool things to enjoy on our very own planet too.”

 He huffed and took his drink with him down to the water’s edge with a bit of a waddle as his feet touched the hot sand. In fact, he might have even been a bit drunk. There was simply nothing to him. He was sure to be a lightweight. For a moment, I worried about letting him go in the water in that condition, but I realized he’d not even bothered to take off that loud Hawaiian shirt. He probably wasn’t planning on going swimming so I let him be and closed my eyes.

 I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I knew he was shaking me awake, his face very clearly sunburned but his expression childlike and excited. “Come look at my sand castle!”

 I sat up, squinting through my sunglasses toward the beach. I took it back. Matthew Bellamy was not bad at the beach. He was bad at sunbathing. He was clearly some kind of expert sand castle builder.

 “What the fuck, Matt…” I stood, squinting at the massive sand structure. There was no way he, an amateur beach goer, had built _that._

 I walked with him. A group of kids were actively digging a moat around the castle, excited and desperate to help and preserve such an awesome construction. The castle was nearly as tall as I was, and it had turrets and curves, windows and bridges and even a dragon.

 “You did this?”

 “Yeah!”

 “Is that… a UFO?”

 “Yeah… its an alien invasion. See?” He pointed at a line of smooth green sea glass pieces he’d dubbed the “aliens” arranged so they were emerging from the UFO and marching toward the castle.

 Everything had to have some kind of a space twist on it with him. “You are ridiculous and also very sunburnt.”

 “Can you take some pictures of us with the castle? I’d do it but you made me leave my phone at the hotel…”

 He didn’t need to ask, though. I’d already dug my phone out and was snapping pictures. Of course I was going to document it such a spectacular sand castle. Matt Bellamy was irritatingly good at just about everything, it seemed. Even in play he was ridiculously productive. The drawbridge he’d built over the moat actually worked, for fucks sake. It was just a sandcastle!

 Matt and the kids gathered in front of the castle, beaming proudly of their accomplishment. I snapped a few pictures of them too, then emailed the photos off to a few coworkers, my good friend Tom, and Chris as well.

 Unfortunately, the sun was starting to go down, and the tide was coming in to wash away all of Matt’s hard work. The kids had resumed digging a huge moat around the castle, making a game out of saving it, but fighting the power of the sea would eventually be in vain. They were cute, but I dragged Matt away. He was really sunburnt and probably needed to get hydrated and eat something.

 

~*~*~

 

“Can I ask you something?” I asked, setting my menu down after I’d decided what I was going to order.

 Matthew peered at me over the top of his menu, his poor forehead seemed to be getting redder by the minute. He was going to be miserable very soon. Despite his early obsession with applying sun cream, it seemed once he’d gotten busy he’d forgotten about it entirely. “Hmm?”

 I took a quick drink from my water. “Why do you live in such a rundown, shitty house? You could easily live like this the rest of your life and be perfectly comfortable. It’s been bothering me since we got here. Clearly, you’ve shown me you can afford this lifestyle. So why don’t you? I don’t understand.”

 Matt was quiet for a moment behind his menu. I wasn’t sure if he was still picking something to eat or if I’d asked too personal of a question that he didn’t want to answer. He did eventually set his menu down and look at me though. “Well… you’ve read 1984. You know how it is.”

 “I _really_ don’t. What’s 1984 got to do with anything?”

 “You know the scene where Winston is looking out the window at this Prole woman? And he’s thinking about how the only truly free people were the Proles, and that they would have so much power if they weren’t so stupid and ignorant. But they’re just the scum of the earth, lowly, and not for the party to concern themselves with. Who cares about the Proles.

 Ah. I think I knew where he was going with this, though his logic was… extremely faulty. How to explain? I wasn’t sure, but before I could even begin, the waiter interrupted us to bring us our drinks and take our orders.

 “So I live amongst the Proles, so I can be free,” Matt continued as soon as the waiter was out of ear shot.

 I rubbed my temples. “Are you though? Really?”

 He blinked.

 “The point of the Proles in the book was they were free because they were blissfully ignorant. Not because they were poor. Neither of which you are, by the way. Is living with paranoia really freedom? You have to admit you walk a dangerous line with what you consider the ‘enemy’. You spy as much as Big Brother, if we’re comparing the real world to 1984, which, by the way, as accurate as it may seem some days, is still just a story. It’s not a bible to live by.”

 He stared at me and pursed his lips. “Well then, maybe you’re the ignorant Prole, aren’t you?”

 I raised my eyebrow and took a sip of my beer. “Certainly living my life more freely than you are.”

 “Cheers,” Matt muttered, holding his wine glass up half heartedly.

 I sighed and clinked my glass against his, pitying him for his fear-filled and lonely life.

 “Anyway,” he said after a long pause and a drink. “It’s my parents house.”

 That surprised me. “Your parents? Are they not around anymore?” He was awfully young to not have parents.

 He drank again. Fidgeting, he was clearly a little uncomfortable with the topic. “Nah. They died some time ago.”

 Now I really felt bad. “I’m really sorry, mate. That can’t have been easy. You were close I presume?” I met his gaze and he looked at me with his nose scrunched up, as if something stunk. Which… losing one’s parents really did, so that was fair.

 “Yeh, they were good people. They’re the reason I do this… y’know? Build a spaceship? Dad taught me everything he knew about the stock market and stuff too, so I could have a good future and funds for anything I needed. Told me to learn as much as I could about anything I could so that I could do anything I put my mind to. I guess that’s standard parent stuff though, right?”

 “Yeah, good parents are like that.” Woof. I’d not expected the conversation to take such a turn. Matt had never come across particularly melancholic to me. But then, he wasn’t exactly an open book either. This was probably the first time he’d opened up to me about something so personal, so human. I was older than him and still couldn’t imagine a life without my parents in it. I apologized again. “I’m sorry, mate. For your parents and… insulting your house.”

 “Thanks.”

 “So… they liked space too, then?”

 Matt nodded. “Sometimes, I think, maybe they’re out there, y’know? In space? I know that sounds dumb… I’m not really a religious person.”

 Things were getting deep. I was completely ill prepared for this kind of conversation but I did my best. “Well, religion or in your case, spirituality, can be a comfort for a lot of people when they’re grieving. It’s really not that strange to think that.” Honestly, it wasn’t even that surprising that Matt would think that sort of thing at all.

 “Not like heaven. I don’t really believe in that stuff. I don’t really know what I mean, it’s silly. Sorry.” Matt sipped nervously from his glass. He was vibrating again, so I knew his foot was jittering like crazy. Poor thing.

 “It’s not,” I reassured him.

 “It’s all a bit David Bowie, isn’t it?”

 I grinned. “Well, maybe. Were they kind of paranoid… like you? Your parents?” I asked, trying to lighten the mood a little bit.

 “I guess they were… I had to get it from somewhere…” Matt said with his own crooked grin.

 There was a long silence again. “I feel like I understand you a little better now. So…uh… thanks for…uh… trusting me… and….opening up to me about that.”

 “Cheers,” Matt held up his wine glass again, this time more enthusiastically, just as our food came.

 “Cheers,” I conceded.

 


	11. Chapter 11

“Dooooooooommmmmmmmmmmmmmm,” Matt whined for the hundredth time, his head knocked against my shoulder repeatedly in the already cramped space of the airplane. Now that our trip to Hawaii was over, it seemed Matt was done trying to impress me and had grabbed whatever seats were available on the multiple flight journey we were now on. Not only had I basically been kidnapped along on his pop up trip to Brazil, but I’d been trapped on airplanes with him for the past 24 hours whilst he complained almost nonstop about his horrible sunburn and how much pain he was in. I’m not quite sure what it was I’d done to deserve this, but apparently, it was all my fault, according to Matt.

 

“Stop,” I shook my newspaper, my eyes never leaving it. “ _You_ forgot to put the sun cream on. Not me. And quite frankly, you’re lucky it’s only on your face and arms. You could have not been wearing a shirt. A sunburn on your back would have been much much worse.” It was like talking to a child. “I’m not taking responsibility because you forgot sun cream. You’re an adult. _No!_ You can’t blame me for bringing you outside! You needed to get some fresh air for once. Stop. Poking. Me.”

 

I’d learned one valuable lesson. Being in pain made Matt Bellamy unproductive. I was unsure what to do with this information, but I was sure it would come in handy someday if I ever needed to interrupt his productivity meter if it ever got out of control again. Right now, however, I wished he would _just_ learn to ignore his sunburn so he could be his usual productive self long enough to give me some peace. Read a book or twelve. I’m certain he could.

 

Admittedly, I knew very little about the country of Brazil. I prided myself on being a pretty cultured man, but I had not ventured to South America before, though Rio de Janeiro or São Paulo would be interesting places to visit. Our final destination, however, was a remote city called Manaus which was land locked and completely isolated in Northern Brazil, accessible only by plane or boat, according to Matt. And it was surrounded by the vast Amazon Rainforest. As we landed, I was amazed to see just how large of a city Manaus was. It was much more urban than I’d expected of such an isolated place.

 

As whiny as Matt had been throughout the flights, once we landed in Manaus, he was all business, commandeering the trip just as he had in Hawaii. Although it was an international airport, the Manaus airport was actually unexpectedly small, with only two terminals, only one of them serving as a public terminal. This might officially have been the smallest airport I had ever flown into. Handy, as it made customs a quick and relatively painless process. We exited the terminal and Matt made a beeline for the car rental counters, tugging on my arm as he went.

 

“I think it's best if we hire a car,” he said to me.

 

I looked at him, shocked. “ _You?_ Want to hire a _car?_ Do you normally hire a car here?”

 

He glared at me indignantly. “Of course not, you knob. I haven’t got a permit, have I? But I reckon it’ll be the fastest and most convenient. I’m trying to be considerate. You’d not like doing it my way if given a choice, I’m sure.”

 

“Hmph. Very considerate. Make _me_ hire the car _and_ drive the car because you haven’t got a drivers license. Cheers to that, mate. As if I have the foggiest clue where we’re going or the rules of the road here.”

 

“They’re all the same aren’t they? Look, it’s this or we take a boat, which would take a few _days_ and require more hiking, or we find a place that hires out burros, which could take a few _weeks._ ”

 

Like hell I was going to go anywhere near the rivers. I’d heard all kinds of things about anacondas and piranhas and gators lurking in the depths of the Amazon waters. And my designer trousers were not about to be sat on a dirty, smelly burro. With a sigh I stepped up to the nearest counter, pulling out my passport, license and credit card. Immediately, the counter agent began speaking to me in another language. Spanish, I thought, or maybe Portuguese. Neither of which I spoke. I felt like a deer caught in headlights but without missing a beat, Matt began conversing with her, and then translating for me.

 

Of _course_ he could speak another language fluently. _Of course._ He could probably speak multiple languages fluently. He was a human computer. What _couldn’t_ he do? At this point, I shouldn’t have been surprised by anything he could do. And yet. We finished the transaction, grabbed our luggage from the baggage claim and headed outside to collect our rental car. A Volkswagen Golf, apparently. As were… most of the cars on the lot.

 

“Popular car here,” I muttered. “Hopefully the AC works.” We’d been outside less than two minutes and I was already sweating buckets. How was the climate here so much different from Hawaii? I could physically see the heat here. According to the temperature display in the vehicle it was 28 degrees. But with the humidity, I thought it surely felt closer to 32. This was not the kind of weather a Brit was accustomed to. I started the car and tested the AC. It took awhile of it blowing hot air, but eventually it began to cool down. Thank God. Matt loaded our bags into the boot before taking his usual spot in the middle back seat.

 

“Can’t you sit up front with me for once? I’m completely out of my realm here and you’re my navigator. It’s much easier for me if you’re in the front.”

 

“The burros are always an option.” Buwwos.

 

“I don’t understand _why_ you have to sit in the backseat all the time,” I muttered as I got into the driver's seat. Burros were never going to be an option as far as I was concerned.

 

“It’s the safest place in the car,” he replied.

 

“Assuming we crash.”

 

“Assuming we crash,” he confirmed as he worked at putting his bike helmet on.

 

“So little trust in my driving skills.”

 

“Hey, not just yours. Everyone else on the road. And the road conditions themselves.”

 

I turned and looked back at him. “… Are you telling me we’re going to be traveling on shady roads?”

 

“The ones we’ll be on in the city aren’t bad. They’re paved.”

 

“So we are traveling on unpaved roads.”

 

“Yes. And they might get a little hairy.”

 

Great. Just fantastic. “Alright then. Where to, Master?”

 

“Ew, please don’t call me that,” a pause. “We should probably stop and get some supplies. I need to stop at an electronic store and we better stop at a hardware store too. I’m pretty sure there’s a few of them along the 175. Which we’ll be taking.”

 

Okay. That was helpful. I could already see signs for the 175 from here in the car park. I eased the vehicle into gear and onto the road, following the signs toward the 175. The road was relatively nice and it was paved. So far nothing much different from the UK other than having to stay on the right side of the road. Most of Europe actually drove on the right side, so it wasn’t new for me. But it was still difficult to get used to, regardless. It was one of the few things the UK was a bit backwards on compared to the majority of the world. At least we had the metric system though.

 

As we made our way toward the city center, I soon learned Matt had not been exaggerating about the other drivers on the road. They were incredibly aggressive. People changed lanes with no indication. Traffic lights and signs were nearly nonexistent. The road would narrow from four lanes to two lanes unexpectedly, causing complete chaos and many near accidents. This was truly the worst driving experience I’d ever had and I wasn’t even especially prone to anxiety. “I’ll remind you I wanted no part in this. You dragged me here against my will— _Jesus Christ_ !” I cried as I swerved to barely miss a driver making a very sudden U turn in front of me. I slammed on the brakes. “And I _don’t_ understand why you have to put a server in such a remote place. Why couldn’t you have just put it in the city somewhere? How do you even get an _internet_ connection in the middle of the forest??”

 

I don’t know why I thought I’d get any kind of answer from Matt. He was of course too busy having a total panic attack in the back seat. I watched the scenery instead.

 

While the 175 skirted us to the North, I’d been able to catch a glimpse of the city’s skyline; concrete stacks in the distance, barely varying one from another, no architecture to them whatsoever. Manaus was a fairly large city, at a population over two million, but it was clear it was not a wealthy city. Most of the buildings seemed to be in some stage of decay, with the occasional newer buildings looking no newer than the 1970s and built on the cheap. Brazil was considered a third world country, which much of what I was seeing confirmed. But it also seemed to teeter on the edge of being a developed world. It was an industrialized world. I passed a brand new Microsoft facility, which was next to rundown markets whose awnings were barely holding themselves up on shaky wooden poles. I could at least say I was getting a bit of a taste for the culture here, anyway, even if it was just from the road.

 

Matt managed to grunt when he saw stores he wanted to stop at. First an electronic store where he bought some random server equipment because he wasn’t sure what kind of problems he would be facing when he got out there, but had a few ideas to start with. Then we stopped at a hardware store. I’d been expecting him to pick up maybe some screwdrivers or an electric drill. Which he did. But he also hauled out a chainsaw. What in the world did he need a chainsaw for? I didn’t want to know. We made one last stop to pick up snacks, water, bug spray, sun cream and some extra fuel for the car and for the chainsaw.

 

“Are you going to tell me what all this is about? Where are we going, exactly? And… how worried do I need to be about… drug cartels?”

 

“Not where we’re going, no. We’re heading out of the city. I’m sure there’s some drug traffic on the 174 but we should be fine. Where we’re going is _not_ a convenient place for meet ups like that. Trust me.”

 

“I guess I have to, haven’t I?”

 

Matt directed me back on the 174 and the further we got out of the city, the easier it was to forget that Brazil, or at least Manaus, was so run down. The road was in decent condition and eventually the only thing to the right and left of us was forest. There wasn’t even much traffic on the road either. Matt had calmed down enough now in the back to explain that really, driving and road travel was very unpopular in Manaus, and that travel by boat was the main form of transportation. He’d picked a location accessible by both, but preferred the “road less travelled.” Nothing surprising there. Except for the riding in a car part.

 

We stayed on the 174 for a little under two hours before Matt directed me onto a dirt road. “We follow this… until we can’t follow it anymore,” he said.

 

The first few kilometers of the road were kept up quite nicely. Matt explained that there was a small forest management school located out here, and besides that one place, the area was about as remote as they came. The longer we were on the road, however, the worse it got. Potholes dotted the whole road. The edges of the forest crept in on the sides, undergrowth threatening to grow over the entire thing. And then, there was a tree, fallen across the road.

 

“Is… this where we stop?” I turned, to look back at Matt. He shook his head and got out of the car. “This is why we come prepared.” He pulled out the chainsaw. I had to laugh a little. He was so tiny he could barely handle the thing. But evidently, that did not stop him. He stormed forward with the thing roaring, ready to attack the offending tree that was in his way. It wasn’t a huge tree, by any means. And he cut through it fairly easily. He seemed to know what he was doing, as if this wasn’t the first time he had handled a chainsaw, despite it seeming to be too much for his tiny body. He dropped the mechanical beast and began trying to move the more manageable pieces of the tree off the road. This was the part he struggled with and so I stepped in and helped.

 

I was absolutely panting and sweating by the time we moved the last log out of the way. “I can’t believe you’re making me do all this. This is absolutely absurd. My clothes are completely ruined!” I whined, grabbing three water bottles and guzzling them all.

 

“You didn’t have to help with that. I could have handled it myself.”

 

“Oh _please_. You’re a twig.”

 

He had dirt on his face, as I’m sure I did too. He wiped at it, only smearing more across his forehead. “Well, thanks for the help. But if I couldn’t lift it, all I have to do is cut it into smaller and smaller pieces until I can. You didn’t have to break your fingernails over it.”

 

“I work out.” I rolled up my sleeve. “See? I’ve got some guns.” I flexed for him.

 

He reached and squeezed my bicep. “Very nice.”

 

“Anyway. My clothes are already ruined. How much worse can it get?”

 

~*~*~*~

 

The answer was a lot. The tree across the road had been just the beginning. The road’s decay only got worse the deeper into the forest we went. To top it off, it had started to rain, making visibility more difficult and mud a problem not anticipated. The ridges on which the road travelled on narrowed, the embankments on either side giving way to steeper and steeper valleys. There were more trees we had to cut through. So many more trees. Some of them were small. Some of them were much bigger. One was so big that we had to make a tunnel under it. There were fire ants. There’d been a snake. It had tried to bite me. That had been my last straw and I sat in the car and watched Matt do all the hard labor after that. I hated this. I just wanted to go home.

 

When he finally got back in the car, I put my foot down. “I’m not going any further. This is getting ridiculous and we are risking our lives.”

 

“I’ll walk then. We’re almost there.”

 

I hit my forehead against the steering wheel. I felt like I was in hell. “You’re _not_ walking… There are… _snakes…_ and… _creatures._ It’s a _jungle_ , Matt. God, _why_ do you do this? _Why_ are you like this? _Why_ do you insist on having server in this hellish place? _Why_ do you do this to me…? I just wanna go home…I didn’t ask for this!” I slumped forward, sobbing. “My trousers are _ruined. I almost got bitten by a snake. This is the worst day of my entire life!”_

 

Matt was silent for a while and then he simply got out of the car. The rain had picked up again and despite being in the tropical rainforest, the rain made it cold. He started walking down the road, now almost entirely covered by the undergrowth of the forest. The only hint that a road had even existed there were the wheel marks that had all but disappeared. I was exhausted. I couldn’t fight him anymore. He was a hurricane and refused to be stopped. He’d defeated me at last. He was out of sight now, gone around a bend. And I waited in the car. Numb.

 

~*~*~*~

 

Thunder crashed overhead. He’d been gone some time and now I was starting to worry about him. He was probably cold. What if he’d slipped and fallen somewhere? What if he’d gotten bitten by a snake? Reluctantly, I started the car and inched it forwards around the bend. I could at least help by getting the car a little closer to him for when he came back. I’d go until I came across another tree, I vowed. That was my compromise.

 

The stretch ahead was straight and I crept along at a snails pace. The turf had gotten so incredibly rough and I was terrified of damaging the rental car. Though it already had scratches from brushing too close to the undergrowth. I drove until… it was no longer clear where the road was. The forest had all but taken over. Trees grew where there maybe might be a road. Or maybe a road had never been. And that’s when I realized I’d actually driven until I could drive no more. This was the end of the road! It’d only been a few hundred meters ahead of where I’d stopped. Matt was here! He was near here! The server was near here!

 

I was so excited that I’d actually made it to the end of the road, I forgot about being upset. I jumped out of the car searching for Matt. I called to him. I called to him again. He called back from my right. The forest was thick so it was difficult to find him but when I did, he was sitting on a rock at the edge of an embankment, looking a bit defeated.

 

“I’m… sorry I blew up at you,” I said, sitting next to him, looking at him.

 

“It’s fine. I deserved it, dragging you out here. I’m sorry,” he replied. “This ended up being just as worthless of a trip as you said it was.”

 

“Well.. No… we got to the end of the road! Your server is by here, right?”

 

He pointed across the valley and I followed his finger. A gap in the canopy. A dark scar slashed across the green landscape the hill opposite us. A landslide. The antenna of a satellite dish poked through the debris of tree limbs and mud.

 

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me…”

 

“It could be worse… I guess…”

 

“How could it _possibly_ be worse? We came all the way out here and went through _all of that_ only for Mother Nature to have decided to _literally_ take a dump on your server!”

 

“At least I know a human hasn’t been tampering with it…”

 

“I _guess?”_ What kind of logic…?

 

Matt stood up. “It’s a loss. I’ll just have to work around it. Let’s go.”

 

“You’re not gonna rebuild? We’ve come all this way… We can stay a few extra days if that’s what you need…” I was both relieved and annoyed to hear him give up on something so easily. Relieved, because it meant we could go home, but after all he’d dragged me through, I wasn’t especially happy to hear that giving up was the plan. Of all the times for Matt Bellamy to give up on something.

 

Matt shook his head. “It’s a loss. It’s not worth it at this point. I wouldn’t need it that much longer anyway. But I’m glad to have the peace of mind that it wasn’t tampered with.”

 

“You are the most _paranoid_ person I have _ever_ met. My god. Drag me through all of that for nothing but _peace of mind. For you! What do I get out of all this?_ ”

 

“An adventure? A story you’d never get to tell if it weren’t for me?” Matt grinned at me.

 

“You’re _infuriating_.”

 

“You’ll thank me for it someday, I’m sure.”

 

Another crash of thunder and suddenly we were under a complete downpour.

 

“We’d better get out of here,” I said. “Before we end up a victim of a landslide too.”

 

“Race you.”

 

And before I knew it, Matt had taken off and I immediately followed. And that was the first time we raced in the rain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's note: I went on the greatest adventure writing this chapter and I hope that you enjoy it too! I spent a great deal of time researching Manaus and exploring it via google maps. Maybe some day I will get to visit there for real! It's now become quite close and dear to my heart, thanks to this chapter. 
> 
> For Brazillian readers, I can't get the band to come to Brazil, but I hope that Matt and Dom visiting in my story helps a little bit. Your country is quite fascinating and deserves more attention and love.
> 
> Author's note two: I've created a spotify playlist with the songs that have helped inspire this story. Each week I add a new song (or two) for each chapter. This week I added Brazil by Declan McKenna. Below is the link if you'd like to follow it!
> 
> https://open.spotify.com/user/to-my-yeah-yeah/playlist/5ZSWWp666vlLCvkQRSVcaT?si=lAkQPa0_QH-fV9Ls2zPFvg


	12. Chapter 12

Coincidentally, the next time Matt and I jogged together, it was pissing rain.  But then, it was the UK. It was always raining, wasn’t it? It wasn’t planned, us jogging together, at least not by me, anyway.  But somehow, Matt had discovered that I’d taken up a regular jogging schedule when we’d returned from Brazil and one day our paths merged and he fell into step with me, seemingly out of nowhere.     
  
I was annoyed.  How many more hours in a day did we need to spend together?  We’d just spent nearly a week together traipsing around Hawaii and Brazil, and he’d become a regular fixture at work long ago.  I nodded at him in polite greeting but continued my jog in silence, listening to his breathing next to mine, far less labored than my own.  That frustrated me, and had been why I’d taken up jogging in the first place. I’d felt rather incompetent next to Matt.    
  
The truth was, up until a week ago, I’d greatly underestimated how fit Matthew Bellamy was. He might have looked scrawny and underfed, but the man had stamina. He biked everywhere he went, stubbornly avoiding riding in cars or on trains, the side effect being he could out pace me with little effort. And I’d watched him handle a chain saw all on his own. Barely. He’d certainly struggled with it, but it was impressive what he could do. And it wasn’t that I was out of shape or anything. But focusing on muscle building didn’t exactly build cardio, as our trip to Brazil had shown me.   
  
So why did he need to be jogging with me?   
  
His answer? “Have to be fit to be an astronaut, haven’t you?”    
  
“I think you’ve proven already that you’re quite fit, though you could stand to gain some weight.”   I was just going to ignore that astronaut bit. No point in feeding into it at this point, right?    
  
“Oh.  Well… then, I just wanna run with you.  Is that okay?”    
  
I grunted.  Somehow it felt like taking candy from a child if I’d said no.  A grunt was noncommittal. Let him take that as he saw fit.   
  
He saw fit to continue jogging with me.  I accepted my fate begrudgingly.

 

~*~*~  
  
  


The next day I brought headphones.  He was there again. And the day after that.  And the next day after that. I listened to music everyday until one day my headphones were rudely yanked from my ears and the headphone jack, the ending chorus of Come On Eileen by Dexys Midnight Runners blasting to the public from my phone.  I stopped in my tracks, my hand chasing the headphones that now dangled from Matt’s hand. I glared at him and his blue eyes met mine with an amused sparkle.   
  
“No wonder your pace was so weird today.  Why are you listening to that gay shit? That’s terrible running music, the tempo is all over the place.”    
  
I snatched my headphones back.  “Dexys Midnight Runners aren’t gay! And it’s a good song…”    
  
“The 1980s were a very gay time, Dominic.”     
  
“How would you know? You weren’t even alive.”   I started jogging again while I fussed with trying to get my headphones back in.  Matt followed suite, in step with me almost immediately.   
  
“Neither were you.”     
  
Touché.    
  
“My grandparents were.”  He said. “Great-grandparents?  Whatever. I never knew them.”    
  
“I knew mine.”   
  
“Yeah? Your great grandparents? Or just your grandparents? Tell me about them.”   
  
“Both.  What’s to tell you that you don’t probably already know?”  I huffed. Jogging and talking was tough. But he seemed to do it so easily.     
  
“It’s not like I can download all the information in the world straight into my brain…”    
  
“No?  Kinda seems like it sometimes.”     
  
“Tell me! Or tell me something about yourself! C’mon.  We’re mates, right?” Why did he suddenly want to know more about me?  I didn’t even know how to talk about myself. It always felt like nothing but rodomontade.   
  
I jogged a few paces in silence, trying to build up the energy to reply.  “It’s not easy to talk and jog, mate. Can we not?”   
  
He shrugged.  “I guess…”   
  
I was about to get my music going again when I caught Matt humming the tune of Come On Eileen.     
  
“I thought you thought that song was gay.”   
  
“It’s stuck in my head now…” 

 

  
  
~*~*~

 

  
  
He was always humming it now.  Every time I saw him. Whether we were jogging or he was meeting me at work.  I even caught him singing “Too ra loo ra too ra loo rye aye” under his breath when we ran into each other in line at the coffee shop before our jogs.  Entirely coincidental, I’m sure.    
  
Our jogs became a regular thing.  And soon, coffee before, lunch after.  A kip in the grass in the park before heading to work, especially if it was a rare sunny day.  Soon, we were exchanging reading lists. Gardening tips. Recipes. In fact, he’d begun to feel less like an annoying, weird tag-along and more like a friend.  An actual mate.    
  
Granted, he was still plenty weird.  This hadn’t been a transition from a paranoid, hacker, wannabe astronaut to a normal person.  He was still all of those other things. But he seemed more comfortable around me to talk about other subjects sometimes.  And as a result, I felt the same around him.    
  
It was during one of these sunny kips in the grass that Matt rolled on his side and faced me.  “Tell me about your family. What was it like, growing up with them?”    
  
The question took me by surprise.  I again wondered what I could tell him that he didn’t already know about me?  Did I want to tell him more things about me? Was this information he was looking to hold against me in the future, maybe?  I guess my pause was too long because Matt prompted me again when I didn’t answer straight away.   
  
“Is it a touchy subject?  I’m sorry.”   
  
“Oh… no… it’s not.  My family is great. It’s just… why do you ask?”   
  
“Erm… to get to know you?”   
  
“That’s a very normal, human thing of you to do and I’m suspicious.”    
  
Matt chuckled a little, but it sounded forced and a little sad.  He glanced away. “Sorry, I’m weird. Guess I never quite figured it all out.”    
  
Something about the way that he’d said that made my heart sink.  I felt pity for him. He seemed like such a lonely person. Someone who’d no doubt gotten bullied as a kid. He reminded me of my friend Tom when he’d been much younger.  Toward the end of Primary school, Tom had started developing long before everyone in our class had. He’d already been a shy kid, but the added body hair, a voice that cracked and squeaked every time he spoke and the added stockiness had made him the ridicule of many.  He’d been extremely withdrawn and the few interactions I’d had with him in school had been awkward, like he didn’t know how to interact with anyone else. However, I’d befriended him the summer between Primary and Secondary and found out he was actually a pretty funny bloke once he’d opened up.  I’d always had a sort of easy confidence and had little trouble socially, growing up. As such, I was considered one of the more popular kids so once school resumed in the autumn and kids saw that I’d befriended Tom the Gorilla, and a few others had started going through puberty themselves, he became accepted.  Since then he’d blossomed into an absolute comic with a knack for electronics. I’d freelanced his work on many of my projects and the AI he’d developed was the main interface for our suborbital craft.    
  
Suddenly it hit me that the reason Matt was probably so obsessed with going to space was only because he was struggling to find meaning and connection here on Earth.  Of course that’s what it was. I felt silly I’d not realized it before. My gaze softened as I looked at him, seeing him now for who he really was, a lonely kid, trying to get to know people in a nontraditional way through diligent research instead of talking with them and finding an emotional connection.  He was looking for his happiness in the wrong places. The answer wasn’t leaving this place that had left him feeling so cold and lonely. The answer was making Earth a better place for him. It was then that I realized that he really had become my friend. I cared about him and I wanted to help him find those things, just as I’d helped Tom all those years ago.  Tom, who was still to this day one of my very best friends.   
  
“Why are you looking at me like that…?” Matt asked, side-eyeing me with unease.     
  
I shook my head with a little smile.  “It’s nothing. My family was really great.  My mom and dad have always been really supportive of me and my sister’s interests.  Y’know? Happy to get me my first chemistry set when I showed interest in science. Later, lots of those engineering kits.  Started helping dad with the car in the garage,” I grinned. “Guess that’s why I’m kinda into cars. I’ve got a few at home, you know.”   
  
Matt nodded.  He knew. Of course he knew.   
  
“My sister got into acting and she’s been doing pretty well at it.  Has landed some great roles on Broadway, actually! That’s not an easy career choice so having supportive folks is a really big deal, I think. Pretty proud of her.  Overall, it was a good childhood. Happy. We were financially pretty well off. It was all right. Kinda miss those days. Anyway,” I looked at him. “You know what my mum is like, don’t you? Didn’t you meet her? Didn’t you get some of her banoffee pie?”   
  
Matt rolled on his back with a moan that was almost sexual.  “Ohhhhhh, god, yes. It was so good… What I wouldn’t do for another slice of that… Please give me that recipe sometime….”    
  
I couldn’t really picture Matt being a particularly adept cook, since he couldn’t make a functional cup of tea, but I was beginning to realize that Matt had quite a sweet tooth.  And mum’s banoffee pie had always been too sweet for my tastes, so of course Matt would like it.   
  
“Okay my turn.  You never really told me about your photography.  You got distracted by your… motherfucking server in Brazil,” I said with a moan that turned into a chuckle.  He’d been right. I could look back on the entire incident with a bit of fondness now that we’d had some time from it. Not that it had been fun, or funny, because it had been none of those things. It was something else, it was the preposterous nature of the trip that gave it a mercurial essence so similar to Matt's. A server buried in the depths of the Amazon rainforest, a mudslide, torrential downpours, but an unexpected adventure. It had left a lasting impression, just like the annoying but fascinating little man beside me.   
  
Matt arched his back, retrieving his wallet from his back pocket.  He flipped through it lazily before extracting a business card and handing it to me.   I examined the modern, minimalist typeface.    
  
“Matthew James Photography?” I asked.   
  
“Yeah.”     
  
“Isn’t your last name Bellamy?”   
  
“James is my middle name.”   
  
“Oh.  I see.”    
  
“But… ah… that’s my professional name.  That’s the name everyone knows me by. Erm.  It’s my assumed last name.” He pulled out a credit card and handed it to me, a black centurion of course.  Matthew James was etched into the surface as his first and last name, with B set as his middle initial. “Someone, somewhere made an error in setting up banking for me.  Mixed my last and my middle name around and… I never corrected it. It’s been… advantageous… to say the least.”    
  
I arched an eyebrow and sat up, looking at him more sternly.  “So you have two identities, technically.”    
  
“Yeah.  I guess I do.”   
  
“Everything you do is legal my arse,” I grumbled, handing him his credit card back.  I held onto the business card. I’d be checking out his website later, among other things.  No wonder not much had popped up in my early google searches for him. He’d been hiding under a different name.  A different name so close to his real name, that it was easy to overlook on credit cards and ID where names were frequently written out of order.     
  
“Okay I fudged the line a little.  But I’m not the one who made the mistake.  I just… withheld making the correction…”   
  
“Uh huh,” I said, sitting up and playfully rolling my eyes.  “You ready for lunch?”    
  
Matt sat up as well, blades of dead grass coating his back and stuck in his hair.  I gently brushed his back off and turned so he could do the same for me. He giggled.  “You’re covered in grass.”    
  
“No shit.  You think I just rubbed your back for no reason?”    
  
“Awwh I thought you were giving me a friendly pat.”    
  
“No, you dill weed!”    
  
I felt his long fingers brush at the grass on my back and in my hair.  His hand lingered for a moment and dropped as he stood up, brushing the grass from his trousers.  I did the same.    
  
We took a leisurely pace as we walked to our favorite lunch spot, a sandwich shop that had the best Ruebens.     
  
Next to me, Matt quietly sang the bridge to Come on Eileen.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sure you all can guess the song I added to the spotify playlist for this update ;) 
> 
> https://open.spotify.com/user/to-my-yeah-yeah/playlist/5ZSWWp666vlLCvkQRSVcaT?si=hoAWbZmrTCqV5LDV2VXW9w


	13. Chapter 13

Matthew Bellamy was inconsistently perpetual. When he was around, he was ardent, ceaseless and untiring. He was there until he wasn’t. Despite the time we'd begun to spend together, he was still as unpredictable and unreliable as always. Flaky was an understatement. At work, he could be absolutely zealous about a project we were working on, and then disappear for a week at the most inconvenient times. He was there long enough for us to rely on him to carry some weight and then he would drop off the face of the planet, just as he had before our Hawaii trip.

 

There were days I would expect him to show up to jog and I’d find myself standing around like a tit waiting for him, only to realize he’d flaked on me yet again. The first time it happened since Brazil, I worried about him. I’d text him and check my phone constantly hoping he was okay. Sometimes he’d text me back, “I’m in Japan” or “stock market crash today” while other times it was radio silence. Eventually, the worrying ceased as I began to accept that this was just the way that he was. Even after the things we’d been through together. I think even because of that, my concern turned to frustration.

 

It didn’t seem to matter if I talked to him about it either. Simply asking for the common courtesy to let me know before he left was too much to ask, apparently. After all, I had all the funding I needed and the freedom to spend that money as I saw fit. What did we need him there for? And that was true. And it was my fault that I’d started to rely on him. And that annoyed me.

 

As winter approached, he took an especially long hiatus. I’d been meaning to ask him over for Christmas with my family, thinking he might be lonely. The problem was from the day it occurred to me to ask him, all the way to Christmas Day, I never saw him and so never had the chance. I had tried to call him a few days before but he his phone just went straight to voicemail. Not that it mattered to me, of course. If Matt wanted to vanish, that was his choice. I vowed to enjoy my Christmas holiday and stop worrying about Matt's whereabouts. 

 

 

 

~*~*~*~

 

 

At the painfully early hour of seven am on January first, I was woken from my drunken stupor by my doorbell ringing relentlessly. I rolled over and tried to ignore it, hoping whoever it was would go away and let a hungover man sleep off the overindulgence of New Year’s celebratory champagne in peace.

 

Happy New Year, indeed.

 

As the bell rang and rang, it became increasingly obvious as to who was at my door. Who else did I know that was so ridiculously persistent? How he’d managed to get my address, I don’t know. Reaching for my cellphone, I dialed Matthew’s number instead of getting out of bed.

 

“What the fuck do you want?” I mumbled through a croaky and hoarse excuse for a voice.

 

“How did you know it was me?”

 

“Lucky guess.”

 

“Let me in! I’ve made a _huge_ discovery!”

 

“Of course you have. How’d you get my address, you wanker? Never mind, don’t answer that.”

 

“Can I come in?”There was a rustling sound on the other end of the phone and down below I could hear the front door of my house creak open.“Never mind, I got it.”

 

I moaned, hurtling my body out of bed in a very clumsy manner and throwing on my bathrobe and slippers. I hurried downstairs, despite my drunkenness, rushing to the house alarm and slamming my hand against the override button.

 

“I’d thank you _not_ to pick my locks, you idiot. You’re breaking and entering.” Maybe I should have just let the alarm go off. Let the police deal with him. Then again, what was the point? It’s not like I’d be able to go back to sleep after all this commotion.

 

Matthew stood in the hall, dripping on the tile, eyeballing my hungover state. He didn’t look much better than I did, to be frank. I’d only gotten about two hours of sleep and I knew I looked like shit. Matt didn’t sleep much at the best of times, but he usually at least looked rested. Today he was haggard and easily going on his fourth or fifth day without a shower, if I could judge at all by the way his hair stuck up at all angles. His skin had an extra oily sheen and he didn’t smell very fresh either. I staggered to the kitchen to make myself a coffee, rubbing my temples as I walked. He followed me, not bothering to take his shoes off and tracking the nasty January winter across my plush carpets.

 

“Take your fucking shoes off, arsehole.”

 

He kicked his shoes off and left them in the middle of the floor. I sighed heavily and went back, picking them up and depositing them back at the door.

 

“How come no one taught you any manners? Kids these days…” I grumbled, eying the dark muddy stain on my rug. Matt had of course brought along a huge box, as usual, and was too busy dumping its contents on my dining room table to pay me any attention. I sighed, turning and heading back to the kitchen to get some coffee brewing. It was too early, and I was too drunk and hungover for this shit. He started babbling to me immediately and I held my hand up. “Do me a favor, and please shut up until I’ve had at least one cup of coffee and a fag.”

 

Matthew let out a pouty huff and slumped into a chair with a thud.

 

The moment my coffee finished brewing , I poured myself a cup and sat at the table, just inhaling the rich scent, a type of aromatherapy that could raise the dead, which I certainly felt. Probably looked the part too. I could feel the weight of the bags under my eyes, which were as bloodshot as a full batch of special brownies, I’m sure. I didn’t typically smoke in the house, but today was an exception. I cracked the window next to the table and lit a cigarette, taking a deep drag and letting the cigarette hang out the ledge, a trail of smoke commingling in the garden with the hazy fog of the early morning. I felt the nicotine coursing through my veins. If one listened closely enough they could hear the breath of life returning to my crackling, undead body, one puff at a time.

 

“Oi! I don’t want your secondhand smoke!” Matthew exclaimed, his voice approximately the volume of a fire alarm. At least it felt that way to my poor head. I’m certain I’d summoned Satan himself in the glare I cast him and it very effectively shut him up. Perhaps I could hone that skill in my day to day life with some practice.

 

After many sips of coffee and long slow drags on the cigarette, I was beginning to feel a little more human. I stubbed the butt out on my saucer, stood and poured myself another cup of coffee. Only then did I finally offer any of it to Matt.

 

“Sure… if you’ve got sugar.”

 

Of course.

 

I poured him a cup and carried it over to him.

 

“In case you haven’t been able to tell, I’m really not in the mood for this right now. I was at a New Year’s party last night, you know. And I didn’t get to bed until four am. I’m hungover and still a little drunk and not at all happy to see you. Since you seem to be incapable of recognizing that.”

 

“Oh…”

 

“Yeah. Believe it or not, people like it when you respect their personal time and space. I didn’t give even you my address, so it’s actually a huge violation of my privacy that you showed up here.”

 

“It’s in the phonebook though… it’s public infor-”

 

Immediately, I threw my saucer across the room where it crashed against the wall, shattering at an ear piercing level. Matt jumped and ducked, even though I’d not thrown it in his direction or anywhere near him at all.

 

“Damn it!” I shouted a little too loudly, even for myself. “I asked to be unlisted!” I pointed at him, “But that doesn’t excuse you!”

 

He gave me exactly one guilty look before diving immediately into some of the papers he’d dumped on my table, pulling out a rough drawing and some scribbled notes. “Well, I hope this makes up for it then.”

 

I snatched the paper from his hands and glared at it. “What is this?” I demanded. “Its gibberish.”

 

He was timid and nervous.“I-i-it’s not. I think… I think I found something really really important-“

 

Important or not, it didn’t matter how long I looked at it, it still looked like gibberish to me, I tossed the paper back at him. “ _Clearly._ ”

 

“I did!” he insisted, pulling out some more notes, he pushed them towards me. “I think my parents were working on this too! I… look, see these marks? They mean something!”

 

I squinted at some tiny dots and marks across the page— spread amongst the handwritten scrawl that looked like Matthew’s handwriting, but I realized was not—things I would have mistaken for accidental pencil marks or flaws in the paper itself. “What do they mean? I see nothing. You’re crazy!”

 

“It’s a blueprint!”

 

“For what?”

 

“A spaceship! _A real spaceship!_ ”

 

“Are you _fucking_ kidding me, Matt?” I tossed the notebook back at him, narrowly missing his face. He caught it right in time, looking a bit distressed at my reaction. “Now you’re just making shit up!”

 

He looked at the notebook, flipped to a page and pointed at it. “Look at the date!” He grabbed more notebooks, flipping them open and scanning them as fast as he could. “Look, some of this goes back to 1952! Some of this is my grandparents’! My… my great grandparents’!”

 

I snatched more of the notes, looking them over. “Just because it’s old doesn’t mean it makes any more sense. This is all nonsense! All it proves is that your family was full of conspiracy nuts.”

 

“But the marks!” He pointed at some microscopic dots on the paper. “It’s plainly _right there!_ ”

 

This time I really did throw the notebook in his face. He let out a little cry, and I buried my face in my hands. “You’re crazy. You’re actually a crazy person.”

 

“I’m not crazy, you’re just not… you’re not _looking!_ It took me a long time to figure it out too, but once I did it’s so plain. This is the, this is the… the generator, maybe?” He held up a notebook. “And this…” another notebook. “I don’t know what it does… but there's instructions on how to build it… it’s something though! Something important! This is something we can actually build!”

 

“I am not building you a spaceship, Matt. Not now. Not ever.”

 

“Well, okay, you don’t need to help me… I’ll figure it out on my own but… I just wanted to share…”

 

I reached across the table and grasped his hand that was nervously shuffling papers around. “Matt. As your friend, I seriously think you need to get help. You need to see a psychologist. You need a professional.”

 

He looked hurt. “You really think that…?” His voice caught in his throat.

 

“I feel like… I feel like you’re obsessing over this idea that you need to travel to some other planet to be happy because you’re not happy here. You’re lonely and you don’t know how to make friends and look, you have friends now. I’m your friend! Chris could be your friend. There’s so much here on Earth to do and see, and its like you’re not appreciating it.”

 

“I’m happy…”

 

“Are you though?”

 

“This isn’t… about… happiness… Dom, it’s… its about… a need. I need to do this. This is what I was meant to do. I don’t know why. I just feel it. I feel like I have to do this.”

 

“Well, consider… maybe… not.”

 

“I thought you’d be really excited about this…”

 

“No, Matt. And you can’t just… barge in on me every time you’ve got some idea. You just… keep expecting me to drop everything I’ve worked on to help you, just because you’ve got money and an idea. How is that fair to me? Where in this have you once considered what _I_ want to do?”

 

He looked small across the table from me, hunched in his disappointment.“I just… think that… the things you see as impossible… are just obstacles to overcome… So people don’t know…know the answers yet… yet… you and me… we could discover them…together… I think… I think the answers are in here. In these notebooks… We could do this! We would be a great team!”

 

I let go of his hand. It was hopeless, I couldn’t get through to him. I stood up. “No, Matt. I mean it. You need help.”

 

“I just… thought, you know, deep down maybe you really do want… would you at least just look at this stuff? I think it’s really on to something… and I want your opinion…” he asked, sliding some papers my way.

 

“Goddamn it, Matt. Have you not listened to anything I've said? I'm saying this shit as your friend, not just because I wish you'd piss off right now and let me die in peace.” Agh. I closed my eyes and cradled my pounding head in my hands. “Please. Please leave me alone. Go find someone else to pester.”

 

“There’s no one else…”

 

“Then you are going to need to learn to accept ‘No’ as an answer, like the rest of the world has. Please go…”

 

But he was already throwing things back into his box. He held himself stiffly, and he kept sniffing, as if he were trying to hold back tears. I couldn’t find the energy to care at the moment. I stood. “I’m going back to bed. I think you know your way out.”

 

I trudged back upstairs and threw myself back into bed. I was asleep before I could even begin to reflect on the situation that had happened downstairs. When I woke an hour and a half later, I did feel quite a lot better and made my way back downstairs to have a proper breakfast and another cup of coffee.

 

I’d not heard Matt leave, but his box was gone and so were his shoes. I’d half expected him to still be here when I woke up, down for another round of trying to convince me that this was what I wanted to do with my life. I warmed up another cup of coffee and threw some bread in the toaster. My phone buzzed on the counter and I went to check it, but was surprised to find that it hadn’t actually gone off. I looked around, trying to find the source of the sound and spotted Matt’s iPhone on the opposite side.

 

Goddamn it.

 

I sat down to eat my toast, intent on ignoring it for the time being until I’d at least finished my breakfast. The phone buzzed again. And again. I plucked it up, looking at the notifications. He had his settings so that there wasn’t a preview of the emails he was receiving. Of course. That would be far too dangerous.

 

I had no desire to make the effort to return the phone to him. Maybe someone he knew? I picked up his phone and pulled up his emergency contacts. Maybe I could call one of them and let them know that Matt left his phone at my place?

 

But it was me.

 

I was the emergency contact. I was the _only_ emergency contact.

 

I closed my eyes.

 

He’d probably biked out here.

 

He’d… probably biked out here. I did the math. Where he likely chose to live within the city for convenience, I’d chosen to live out in the country where I could have a bigger house, a yard and privacy. Far in the country. He must have biked half the night. I checked my watch. He wasn’t anywhere near to being home yet. I looked outside. It was foggy and rainy and a little bit icy. Ideal conditions for riding a bike.

 

How badly did he need his phone? Probably pretty badly, knowing him.

 

Damnit.

 

“Damnit!”

 

He’d probably left in such a hurry because I’d upset him. He probably didn’t even realize he’d forgotten his phone. Well. It wasn’t _my_ fault he left his phone. That was his problem, wasn’t it? The phone buzzed again. He certainly had a very active email account.

 

I sighed and got dressed, knowing full well I wasn’t _that_ awful of a person that I wouldn’t at least return the phone to him. I did hope I could intercept him before he got home so I didn’t have to go all the way into London, though. I grabbed my coat and shoes and headed to my garage, selecting the keys to my BMW since it had all wheel drive.

 

There were hundreds of combinations of routes that Matt could have taken to get to my place, so it was hard to know which was the best to intercept him. The fastest way by car for me would have been extremely out of the way for him, and on roads that were not bicycle friendly. He’d probably taken London Road to the A21 which was mostly uphill for him. I plugged the route into my GPS and started on my way.

 

Of course, traffic going in towards London had to be a nightmare. That was typical, however it seemed worse than usual, but maybe that was because I was in a hurry. Then traffic crawled to a snails pace and I tried to peer ahead to see what was going on. There were flashing lights far ahead.

 

“That’s too bad,” I mumbled. “I hope no one is hurt.”

 

And then I saw the papers blowing in the ditch and across the road and my hands turned cold and my heart stopped. And then there was a mangled trolly. And I slammed on the brakes and yanked up the parking brake. There was a crunch as the person behind me rear ended my car, but I didn’t care. I left my car in the A22 and ran as fast as I could towards the lights, expecting the worst.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i pterodactyl screeched all the way through writing this chapter just know that i have suffered for years knowing this was coming pls forgive me. 
> 
> anyway song for this chapter is headlights on dark roads by snow patrol.  
> Spotify playlist is here: https://open.spotify.com/user/to-my-yeah-yeah/playlist/5ZSWWp666vlLCvkQRSVcaT?si=2pd4c3VSQFOrP28pWrMPVg
> 
> /withers and dies/


	14. Chapter 14

The events that followed come to my memory in flashes, sometimes not in the right order. I remembered running, and the blood on the broken windshield, chasing after the papers flying everywhere, the mangled bike and the crunched hood of the car, people trying to hold me down, trying to get into the ambulance, the papers- I had to get all of the papers. That had been very very important, I remember. I had to make sure that I got every single one of Matt’s papers. He would be very upset if all of his work was flying around for anyone to see.

 

At some point I found myself in the back of a police car with a blanket wrapped around my shoulders and Matt’s papers in the cracked tote next to me. How many I’d gathered and how many someone else had picked up was beyond my comprehension, though I hoped that I had collected the majority. I worried there were more out there, but someone assured me multiple times that they had swept the whole area and no one had found anything else.

 

People asked me questions about how I was feeling, as if that were important at a time like this. Nobody could give me answers once we got to the hospital either and after pacing around a bit, I finally sat down with the box of papers to distract myself and try to put them back in order for Matt while I waited. It was the only thing I could do to help him, and because I felt completely helpless, I attacked the project with a vengeance.

 

Putting the papers in order forced me to actually read through them, and in doing so, provided a better distraction than I could have even hoped for. While I still for the life of me could not make sense of the dots that Matt insisted was a blueprint, the journal entries that accompanied the information intrigued me. I still thought it was mostly nonsense, but the writings of his ancestors which “translated” these dots into understandable English had admittedly caught my attention. Now I wished I hadn’t kicked him out so soon. Not just because of the accident, I already felt plenty guilty about that. But these papers were actually really interesting, the science and engineering was… plausible. Among the handwritten journals were other papers. Classified looking papers. I didn’t know where he could have gotten them. But for all of the conspiracy theories and science fiction theories I’d read, in front of me were scientific documents that actually made space travel seem like it could be within arms reach. I’d never seen or heard of any of the work done in these papers. I badly wanted to ask Matt where he’d gotten these documents. He was certainly paranoid enough that I doubted he would haul a tote of classified information behind him on a wobbly trolly attached to a bike. Unless it wasn’t classified. But what if it was?

 

I guess even Matt, who seemed to always have mapped out every possible thing that could go wrong, couldn’t have predicted that he would get into a car accident. I felt tears sting my eyes. The idiot. He was so paranoid about riding in cars, and yet, ironically, it was being _outside_ the car that had landed him in the hospital.

 

I managed to get most of the documents back in some sort of order. It was small, and had nothing to do with Matt’s condition, but I felt relieved to know that none of his possibly confidential documents were flying around in nature, or in the wrong hands. Once they were in order, I set to read them more thoroughly, but not even intriguing science could hold my attention for too long. A lot of time had passed and still no word about Matt. Finally after what felt like an eternity a nurse approached me. “Dominic?” she asked.

 

I jumped from my seat, nearly spilling all of the newly reorganized papers. “Is he alive??” I couldn’t help the frantic tone. A lump in my throat had taken up permanent residence.

 

“He’s in critical condition, but right now he is stable. He’s in intensive care. You can visit him but first we need to go through some information.”

 

As it turned out, Matt had listed me as his emergency contact and as a Right To Know for his medical history in case of emergencies. I knew he had no parents, but surely he had _someone_ else who was closer to him than me, a relative or _someone._ But for some reason he’d listed me. And that meant I got full disclosure on his medical status, which right now was quite grim. A coma, they said. With possible brain damage. He’d been further placed into a medically induced coma to help his body and mind to heal. They hoped as they pulled him out of that, he would also wake up. He’d received quite a bit of damage to some internal organs and had flatlined twice. They were unsure if a full recovery would be possible but it was too soon to know just yet.

 

I had never wished I was a religious person more than I did right in that moment. Even so, I found myself saying a silent prayer.

 

~*~*~*~

 

It was not easy seeing Matt in that condition, and I am not proud of how I initially reacted to it. He was already a small person, but in the hospital bed he looked positively dwarfed and frail. He had tubes and catheters coming out of him from all places and a ventilator breathing for him. I knew he had head injuries, but I still wasn’t prepared for the layers and layers of bandages wrapped around his head. All I could think about was what damage had been done to that beautiful mind. Nor was I prepared for the other injuries he’d suffered. Cuts and bruises, a cast on his leg and arm and a bandage around his tiny chest and stomach. He was just a kid. He was really just a kid.

 

I walked out.

 

With his tote of papers in my arms, I stopped at the nurses station and requested the keys to his house because I needed to take care of his dog. Surprisingly, and maybe a bit concerning, that was all the information they needed to hand me his keys. I took a cab to Matt’s house, because the last place I knew my car to be was in the middle of the A22. I let myself in and stared at my surroundings. The desolation of his home. I remembered his critter problems which less than twenty four hours ago, would have prevented me from stepping within 20 feet of the building. Now it seemed like the only logical place to go.

 

I don’t know what I was looking for. Answers, I suppose. Answers as to who Matt really was. To why I was his only emergency contact. I thought I’d been getting to know him fairly decently. We were still in the early stages of it, but now, after the hospital had asked me, close friend of Matthew Bellamy, multiple questions about him and his family and who they needed to reach out to, I realized I didn’t know jack shit about him. He’d become a completely mysterious person to me again.

 

I sat on the couch, thinking about what I did know about him. His parents had died in a car accident. He was very smart. He was very rich. He was very paranoid. He had two names he went by. He was a photographer. He could speak multiple languages. He didn’t have a job. He lived in a dump. Because of… because of something to do with the book 1984. The hope lays in the Proles or something. I would need to read that book again.

 

I knew it was rude to snoop, but if Matt had listed me as his emergency contact and his Right to Know, he clearly trusted me quite a lot. And didn’t I have a right to know who he was? This was an emergency situation after all. The rules changed a bit in those didn’t they? In the front parlor next to the stairs there was a narrow built-in shelf, dark stain mismatched and shelves so warped it was a wonder they hadn’t fallen out completely. The shelves were empty but for a single picture frame on the middle shelf. The photo was old, but I presumed it was a picture of his family. A young man who looked vaguely similar to Matt and a woman who most definitely had his eyes. Two boys, the older smiling and posing nicely while the younger had clearly made a game out of being photographed with a mischievous grin and head tilt. It wasn’t hard to tell which one was Matt. I pulled the picture out of the frame to see if there was anything written on the back of the photo but a few newspaper clippings fell out instead.

 

Before I even unfolded the brittle papers, I knew what they were. The first was an article about the accident, the headline: Fatal Collision, Three Dead. The article following made me feel ill. Matt’s mother, father and brother had all been killed instantly in a roll over crash. Matt, eight, who had been seated in the very middle seat, with his bike helmet on, had been the sole survivor, walking away with nothing but a few bruises and cuts. Police had stated that due to his position in the vehicle, he had survived being crushed.

 

I knew his family had died in an accident. But I hadn’t known that Matt had been in it too, had witnessed his entire family die in front of him. And he’d been only eight years old. His fear of cars became instantly more understandable. Why he insisted on wearing his bike helmet and sitting in the middle of the back seat was now painfully clear. My stomach twisted. How unimaginably tragic. I had been such an asshole to him.

 

The other article contained the obituaries of his family. Mother, Father and older brother all survived solely by son Matthew Bellamy. I wondered who had taken care of all the funeral arrangements if there were no other family members. Certainly not an eight year old boy who was surely grieving. Who had written the obituaries? Both his parents had been only children, and his grandparents had all had early deaths. Matt had been left truly alone at only eight years old. Surely thrown through the foster care system which was, admittedly, quite flawed.

 

I carefully folded the newspaper articles and replaced them back behind the photo in the frame. I would take that back with me to the hospital.

 

Beneath the shelf was a drawer. I pulled it open, finding all of the documents of his life in foster care. I was surprised that he had held on to it, but perhaps he was legally required to do so. I carried the thick folder with me and sat on the saggy couch in his sitting room. A mouse skittered out from underneath as I sat and I shuddered but ignored it. There were more important things to worry about.

 

It was not easy, going through that file. He had rarely stayed with a foster family longer than six months. He’d switched schools so many times it was no wonder he’d taken up teaching himself. Every report stated he was withdrawn, kept to himself, but was always polite and did his chores. The other children never seemed to like him, and he was always sneaking out. In fact it was usually the sneaking out bit that caused the care provider to send him on to someone else. No one wanted to be responsible for anything that might happen to him while he was under their care, but they could not seem to keep him from sneaking out. And the ones that did… I could only imagine the lengths they went to and what that meant for Matt.

 

I laid on the couch and mourned for his childhood. Somehow, after all that, this strange little man had come to _me_ enthusiastic, hyper and bubbly, and somehow so _innocent._ He could have come out so _criminal_ with a background like that. And yet he held out for a dream that his parents had planted in his head when he was a child. He’d done… pretty well. All things considered. Still, the hoards of money concerned me. Maybe he _was_ criminal. I hated to continue to doubt him, but it was still so hard to believe that anyone so young could hoard up that much money and do so legally. I sat up, wiping the wetness from my cheeks, then made my way back up to the computer room. Surely that would be where I would find evidence of his criminal activity.

 

Not that I would try to convict him at this point. As if he needed _that_ on top of everything else. Unless he was doing some really bad shit. Maybe. As a rule follower and a scientist, no one made me question my own morals and understanding of the world the way Matt Bellamy did.

 

The stairs creaked as I made my way upstairs. I half expected booby traps to start going off Home Alone style, however I made it safely up the stairs and down the hallway to the locked computer room without incident. I fumbled through his set of keys, trying to find the one that would work in the lock, but none of them seemed to fit. Of course. That would be too easy. Matt would never make it that easy. I turned to the room across the hall. His bedroom. The bed had been left unmade but the room was otherwise quite neat, though he kept the blinds closed so it was dark. If I hadn’t felt like a snoop before, I certainly did now, going through his dresser drawers, sifting through his boxers and other clothing. There were an alarming amount of keys in there, hidden amongst an equally alarming collection of socks. Four of the eight drawers were just socks.

 

Thankfully, the keys buried within were labelled. Brazil. Tibet. Ukraine. United Arab Emirates. New York. Utah. Canada. Mexico. Lithuania. Sweden. Norway. Japan. Uzbekistan. Indonesia. Wake Island. Uruguay. South Africa. Tasmania.

 

“I don’t even want to know what you need all these for…” I muttered out loud though I suspected it might be related to that server in Brazil. Nothing in the drawers seemed to be for the computer room though, so I moved over to his bedside table. Nothing. I sighed in frustration. If I were as paranoid as Matt, where would I keep the key to my most important room in my house? I stood in silence, listening as if the answer would come from the walls. The room was quite sparse but for the dresser, the bed and the bedside table. He didn’t even have any pictures hanging on the wall for me to check behind.

 

I eyed the bed, which was probably infested with bedbugs. Taking the edge of the fitted sheet between thumb and forefinger I stretched it off the mattress. Shockingly, it didn’t appear to be stained with any tell tale signs of bed bugs. Thank God. I still touched the mattress with care and gingerly flipped it over. Nothing on the underside. I neatly replaced his sheet and made up his bed.

 

The rug under the bed was matted and dirty, but I picked at it, trying to find a loose edge. I worked my way around the room slowly and carefully, constantly afraid something would crawl out from under it. It was entirely by accident that I found the key when I hit my head against the radiator and it fell out. I grabbed it and hurried back to the computer room, not having expected getting into it to have become such an ordeal.

 

That was also where the booby trap was. Of course it was. I’d not even noticed Matt deactivate it when we’d entered the room before, but then I didn’t remember him unlocking it either. Maybe he’d done all that when he’d gone upstairs to change out of his wet clothes. Or maybe the booby trap was a new addition. Either way I didn’t know what hit me… until I woke up on the floor hours later with a tranquilizer dart in my shoulder.

 

This was truly and honestly the worst day of my life thus far.

 

I had no idea how long I’d been out for, or what he’d knocked me out with, but the last time I’d felt this messed up was after I’d gotten my wisdom teeth removed years and years ago. I couldn’t even really remember what I’d come in the room for in the first place. When I finally sat up, the room around me spun, sending waves of nausea through my stomach. Thankfully there was a trash can nearby. I emptied the contents of my stomach and lay back on the floor to stop the spinning. I had the memory of a goldfish, barely remembering the episode of nausea only seconds after it had happened. Minutes went by… maybe hours… my sense of time was completely shot, but finally I was becoming more aware of my surroundings. I’d probably asked myself the same question twenty times, but finally I remembered where I was and what I’d come there for. It was an effective booby trap if Matt wanted to buy himself time to get the intruder out and have him forget he’d even been in his house in the first place. But Matt wasn’t here and I was left to suffer through the waking up process on my own. Finally, I pulled myself into the computer chair and scanned the contents spread across the desk. There was very little, but for a single notebook labelled “Dom.” Cautiously I flipped the cover open. Was this his research notebook on me? What kind of dirt had he dug up about me? How much of it was accurate? It wasn’t about me though.

 

The very first page, addressed to me, was a goodbye letter.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> left you on another cliff hanger again I'm sorry. 
> 
> This chapter's song is The Scientist by Coldplay even though I hate to be that cliche fuck that puts that song on my writing playlist here we are because its too perfect. playlist here: https://open.spotify.com/user/to-my-yeah-yeah/playlist/5ZSWWp666vlLCvkQRSVcaT?si=rHh0DI-sSZG5XbLua-ng5Q
> 
> I do hope you're enjoying the story so far please leave feedback!


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